


Once Upon a Dream

by claritylore



Series: What Dreams May Come (aka, Psychic Supersoldiers in Love) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Character Death In Dream, Dreamsharing, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychic Supersoldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claritylore/pseuds/claritylore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The supersoldier serum is an incredible formula which not only enhances the body, it also enhances the mind. Those few who have survived taking it are left with an intense psychic connection, activated whilst asleep, taking the form of shared dreamspace which can be manipulated to their needs.</p><p>Steve thought he was dreaming all those vivid encounters with the Red Skull. He also thought that the Bucky he kept dreaming about was just a figment of his imagination. But after 70 years trapped and an encounter with the Winter Soldier, Steve comes to realise that it was all very real after all, and that means he has a lot to atone for...</p><p>(More or less canon-compliant until towards the end.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first story in this fandom (I caved into pressure recently to check out CA:TWS and was really surprised by how much I loved it) so be kind! I haven't really seen a lot to do with the other Avengers so that time period is slightly skipped over. 
> 
> Basically, I wanted to write a story where Steve would end up bearing witness to what HYDRA did to Bucky without even knowing it, seeing things without really seeing them, with all the pain and angst that entails. It's more or less finished, just in beta editing stage, so will post updates regularly.

_I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream..._  
\- Lana Del Rey, patron saint of angsty fanfic compliant music

 

It was hard to go to sleep that first night after the serum had reconstructed his body. He had muscles which bulged in strange places, extra height, nothing at all familiar. Steve had always slept on his side before, usually curled around a pillow (or maybe the arm of a friend, once upon a time). Now nothing felt right except to lie flat on his back on a firm surface, which just felt plain strange in itself.

That was the first night he dreamed in such vivid and clear tones he woke up gasping and shivering in shock. He'd been standing witness to the world as it burned, men and women and children fleeing through cities bursting with fire, and he'd ran to try and help and got nowhere. He'd found himself inside a complex of dungeons and tunnels where the flames licked around the walls, and kept running. He'd come to a central room in the complex, a glowing square floating at its centre like a power source, the heavy sound of opera - Wagner - pounding into the air, where the dark silhoette of a man in uniform was standing at the edge, watching the world burn through the windows, arms behind his back.

The heat felt clammy and real, though he thankfully wasn't burning, just felt it on his skin like an unwanted touch. As he drew near, the man snapped around and Steve lurched back at the sight of a grinning red skull face, smothered in flames. He grinned at him and began to laugh, wildly, madness infused in the sound.

"Ve won!" the creature proclaimed in a German accent, and laughed more as it stomped towards him, red hands outspread.

Steve had backed up, afraid, not knowing what to do, and he woke up with his ears still ringing from the sound of that terrible laughter.

It would be some time before he came to understand the meaning of that dream, and the ones which followed it. They were fairly sporadic but every time he found his way into that searing hot complex from the burning streets, where people were dying and he was powerless to help, he would wake with his skin crawling with disgust at that disfigured red face. He always felt trapped in those dreams, pulled unwillingly into a madness he could barely comprehend. They made him feel out of control and nauseous and Steve would have to run for hours to get those images, all that fire, out of his mind.

The dreams plagued him for almost a year while he was on the circuit, persuading the American public to buy bonds and help the war effort. Sometimes the man with the burning red skull for a face would tell him to leave, that he was intruding, and sometimes he would throw his words around about being the pinacle of mankind and destined to rule the world. One one occasion, Steve tried to punch him and missed. In the moment of distraction, the man threw him out of the window and he'd fallen through a vortex of fire and blood that made him actually vomit when he woke up.

One night, as he stumbled through the flames and headed into the building where the burning skull man stalked, he heard something new. He could hear screams echoing from somewhere on the other side of the building. Something clenched inside him immediately because, unlike the dim echoes of people in the streets who were in caught in the hellfire flames of this place, he knew this voice better than he knew his own. And all he could think was, "Bucky? Bucky? Where are you? Bucky?", as he ran, searching and searching.

That was how Steve finally found a haven from the flames that had taken over his nighttime thoughts; a door which led him into their old apartment in Brooklyn. It was the first place he'd come to where the fire was being kept at bay. The frightening screams had diminished to soft and painful whimpers by this time, and he didn't pause to admire the detail of the happily remembered living room that he had unexpectedly discovered on the periphery of his nightmares. He knew at once that the sounds were coming from the bedroom and he was at the door in a second, trying the knob, trying to open it.

"Bucky?" he yelled, and banged on it. "Come on buddy, talk to me. Bucky?"

There was no answer and the door would not be budged.

If he pressed his head against it, listening, he could hear faint voices speaking, not clear enough to hear the words but with the sharp toned edges of a German accent more than apparent to him. Then something started to buzz, like a drill, and the screams overwhelmed him.

Steve woke up in a full body sweat, shaking from head to toe. There had been no way to contact Bucky since his division of the 107th were sent to England for hardcore training with the SAS. He'd wanted to write to him, about the whole Captain America thing, but what could he say anyway? He'd spent months talking Bucky's ear off about enlisting, trying to join up and failing, and then made it into the Army only to get shipped out to perform on stage. Important work, sure, but not what he wanted to be doing.

On those nights when he found himself trapped in those lucid dreams, he only found his way back to that room a handful of times. The twisting complex where the burning skull man lived was vast and labyrinthine after all. When he did, he could never break into Bucky's room, so he tended to sit outside it, talking through the door, trying to find out what was wrong, telling him how much he missed him. Every now and then, he would be rewarded with a pathetic whimper of a 'Steve?' and when he woke up, he would feel like an invisible hook was tearing into his chest, pulling him to somewhere unknown. He hoped the real Bucky was alright wherever he was, though he mostly tried not to think about it.

Then came the fatal day in Italy when Peggy Carter informed him that the 107th Infantry had been captured by the Nazis and he'd thrown everything away for the chance to save Bucky. He had been more than ready to walk through the thirty miles of enemy territory separating him from his friend without any second thought. He would have done it barefoot, over broken glass, if it meant seeing his friend's face again; the news of Bucky's capture and possible death was a gut punch that brought a lot of feelings to the surface.

Steve had always known it was a possibility that he wouldn't ever see him again, that the final hug they'd shared as Bucky headed out to be shipped off for England could be the last. In finding his way into the army soon afterwards thanks to the intervention of Dr Erskine, he'd reconcilled that, even though he hadn't made it into the 107th - not for lack of trying, lying no less than four times during the enlistment tests about his father being on the 107th and dying heroically - he too was heading to the front line so he was in as much danger as Bucky. Then, on being signed up as a 'showgirl', as Captain Phillips would one day dub him, he never had the words to try and explain it to Bucky, that he was safe and warm on the circuit, surrounded by the sort of beautiful women Bucky would have liked, while his friend crawled through trenches and lived from day to day on the front lines, risking his life for his country. No matter how many times he was told that he was inspiring the nation to contribute to the war effort and making a bigger difference than any one soldier, it never really rang true to him. He felt useless; a tiger in a cage, claws clipped, teeth blunted.

Being confronted with the news of Bucky actually being in trouble was a horrifying reality check. He'd been lucky to have friends in Peggy and Howard Stark, who believed in him enough to fly him into enemy territory and give him a chance. He'd been lucky to get inside Johann Schmidt's Hydra base where the remaining soldiers of the 107th were held without being spotted and from there it had been a simple matter to break them out and give them the chance they needed to escape.

None of that luck meant a thing though. It was the luck of finding Bucky the way he did, barely clinging onto his mind, strapped down to a bloodstained table and covered in dirt and injuries, that near reduced him to tears of relief. But even as he hauled Bucky to his feet and led him out of there, he couldn't help but feel an odd sense of deja vu in the dark corridors of the base; as though he'd followed some indistinct map in his mind, left over from those recurring nightmares, to find Bucky and then lead him out as the place began to self destruct, fire licking up the walls the way he had dreamed.

Running into Johann Schmidt, that moment he pulled his skin away to reveal the red skull that had been haunting his mind for so long, was heartstopping. He couldn't for a moment guess what it might mean, beyond that concerning sense of having predicted the future somehow. He looked into the eyes of that creature and saw the madness that he'd witnessed over and over in his nightmares reflected back. But there had been no time to dwell on it; the base was falling apart and Schmidt and Dr Zola were gone. He had to get Bucky out of there.

"Go! Get out of here!" he yelled as the beam Bucky had hauled himself across fell into the fire below, trapping him on the other side.

"No! Not without you!" Bucky yelled, demanding, with more strength that he had any right to have left.

Steve looked at Bucky, his face, and knew he had no choice but to try and jump. No one else could have persuaded him, but he wanted to do it for Bucky. And so he did.

The march back to camp through enemy territory, the 107th following him, with Bucky firmly attached to his side, was a blur. It took two days and nights to make those thirty miles with so many wounded in tow, and he didn't even think to sleep. Bucky was silent but strong the whole time, giving Steve strength like he always had, even though he knew it should have been the other way around after what he'd been through.

When they were back at base camp, Bucky wouldn't stop to rest until every single injured member of the 107th was seen to. Even though Steve had walked at the front of the group, he knew that they were also partly following Bucky, their Sergeant, their brother in arms for the past year. He cut a more serious figure than Steve was used to, though he recognised the pinched expression he wore all too well, since it was the look Bucky had always got when playing nurse to him during his more sicky days.

Only when he was sure that everyone would be alright did he allow Steve to lead him by the elbow to his housings in the temporary pitch set up for the visiting performers. Bucky protested that he could find his own damned bed, but exhaustion made him more pliant than normal. And Steve was feeling very selfish; he wanted desperately to fall asleep next to him again, the way they used to sleep in their little apartment in Brooklyn, so he would wake up and see Bucky's face. After honestly thinking he wouldn't ever see him again, Steve felt a desperation for that reassurance that he'd never allowed himself to feel so fully before. Bucky was home to him, and he was more homesick than he'd ever been his whole life.

He dreamed of the fire and the complex again that night, but it was different; a smoldering mess, half broken down. Steve actually found it easier to get out of the heat and find the door that led into the safety of their apartment. Once inside, he could hear the usual sobs and whimpers coming from behind Bucky's door. The big new difference was that, this time, when he tried the door knob, it finally turned. Steve was able to open it up and was dismayed to find that the door didn't lead into the room he remembered, with the creaky double bed and sackloth curtains, it led into the nightmarish laboratory he'd found Bucky in before.

Just like he had in real life, he unstrapped Bucky from the table and this time, he carried him right out of there, into the living room, slamming the door behind him. Steve dropped down onto their old couch, with the springs working their way out on the right corner, and cradled Bucky to him.

"Steve?" Bucky blinked, like he was coming out of a dream himself.

"I'm here."

"Steve," his friend sighed and smiled at him. He then frowned a little. "You look different."

"I joined the Army, remember?"

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut at that. "No... no you're at home. You're safe." He exhaled, deeply, relaxing into his arms. "You're safe."

"Sure, I'm safe," Steve agreed, and with the certain knowledge that this was a dream, he touched his fingers all over Bucky's face the way he never could in reality. He wanted to feel his skin, his hair, his pulse, desperate to confirm him as alive, even though he knew it was a meaningless facade. "You don't know how much I missed you, Buck. It ate away at me."

"Yeah. Me too. I used to hear you in my head sometimes. Only thing that kept me sane." Bucky snuggled into him, causing an explosion of warmth in Steve's chest. "God, don't go away now Steve. I'm dying out here. I can't do this."

"Don't say that. You're doing great."

"Sure, pal."

It was so strange, the way he could actually feel Bucky in his arms, how he smelled exactly right, how he could feel the tickle of his hair under his nose when he craned his neck to press his lips against the crown of his skull. There was still a sheen of surreality to the whole thing, the room just that little bit hazy, the view of Brooklyn outside hard to decipher, though that was partly due to the infection of orange flames still consuming the city. All the furniture was in the right place and the three still life sketches Steve had allowed Bucky to pin up on the wall (he'd vetoed all his portraits) were exactly where he remembered, plus the table in the corner with one mismatched seat and their radio on it was just so, but the old wallpaper was a little off and the threadbare carpet was a little blurry. They looked like memories, faded in the parts where he hadn't paid enough attention, collected together to make a vague whole that remained familiar.

Bucky was eerily exact, though, right down to the freckle on the left underside of his jaw that always made its way into Steve's practice sketches of him. The sensation of touch felt right too, as if he really was there, nestling close, letting Steve run his hand over his face and through his hair in the way he always wanted to, but never dared.

"Feels good, Steve," Bucky hummed, a small smirk playing about the corner of his lips, his eyelids fluttering open and closed contentedly. "I'm guessing I really died on that table like all those other poor schmucks they took before me, huh? Figures the first angel I meet would have your face on him."

For that, Steve pinched him, and it made Bucky's eyes snap open in surprise. "Hey, you're alive you jerk. And I ain't no angel."

"The hell you ain't." Bucky grinned up at him with the genuine smile Steve hadn't seen once since the rescue. "You're a godammed vision," he said, ardently, and stroke a hand down Steve's face, thumb slowly brushing over his bottom lip.

Steve squirmed a bit, knowing that the real Bucky would never say things like that to him, even if he really thought them, or touch him like that. The real Bucky was rough and tumble, a real guy's guy; the affection was there, sure, but it was restricted to the happy crinkle at the corner of his eyes and their gently traded insults, or at most a pat on the back or snappy hug. Steve thought it should have bothered him that the version in his dream was so obviously sweet on him, since that said a lot about him, but he couldn't bring himself to worry about it. Not when he'd been so scared he'd never see this face again, in dreams or otherwise.

"You're not so bad yourself," Steve sighed, enjoying the chance to be honest. "Scared me Buck, getting yourself captured like that."

"Yeah. Guess I really did take all the stupid with me, huh?"

They laughed gently together, before Bucky's forehead suddenly crumpled into a frown and Steve felt him shudder, right through his body.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?" Steve insisted.

"Nothing. Just... I don't feel like I'm alive. There was a moment on that table, when they stuck the light rays on me that last time, I could feel my blood boiling and my eyes burning and I thought, man this is it, this is really it. What a shitty way to go. And I was never quite sure if I really woke up. Something's been off ever since. I'm... rearranged."

Steve felt a pang of hurt stab in his chest and hated his imagination for taking what he'd saw in that room, the needles and the saws and the lights, and turning it into a narrative of what must have happened to his friend. "You look just fine to me," he said, and ruffled his hair. "You want to try rearranged, look at me. I've been blown up like a balloon. First few days after they did this, I kept walking into things 'cause I couldn't get used to how tall and wide I got."

Bucky flat out giggled at that, his hand flying to his mouth to cover it.

"S'not funny!" But Steve never could resist laughing along when Bucky made that sound. It was his absolute favourite sound in the world and totally infectious.

For the first time in a long time, Steve woke up completely rested and with a happy swell in his chest. Bucky was sleeping soundly next to him, all the dents from his ordeal and the every day worries marring his features smoothed away at last; close enough to touch too. Steve knew he didn't have the nerve to try, but so long as Bucky was within reach at least, he knew things were going to be alright.


	2. Chapter 2

The fire wasn't diminishing exactly, but it was weakening in his dreams. The Red Skull was no longer ignoring him, he was sending ghostly waves of HYDRA soldiers out to attack him. Steve couldn't ever get close to his central room anymore; not that he particularly wanted to. He was only ever safe when he reached the apartment. 

Sometimes he was alone there, and on those occasions he would just collapse and rest a little on the couch, sleeping within his sleep almost. He discovered that his art supplies were in the right drawer of the table, just as they used to be in real life, and he'd been able to sit and scribble some things out to pass the time. The radio didn't ever seem to work, except for that occasion when he'd tuned in and heard the distant crackle of Bucky's screams from before in the static and nearly smashed it. Steve never felt much like trying it out again after that.

When Bucky was there too, they tended to just rest together on the couch, daydreaming of times past and of all the maybes that might exist after the war. They talked about the day's events, about the HYDRA bases the Howling Commandos had taken out, just idly sharing their thoughts. Even though Steve knew that he wasn't really talking to Bucky, this recreated version was almost as good as the real thing as far as he was concerned. He laughed more, relaxed more than his friend did, being more a part of Steve and therefore closer to the echo of the cocky kid Bucky had once been before war found them both.

It sometimes happened that he would find Bucky in the torture chamber that used to be the bedroom, before Dr Zola's laboratory had infected it, and he had to carry him out of it and slam the door behind him before Bucky would even speak, shaking and staring as he did. Steve observed that he dreamed of that on on days when real world Bucky was moody or withdrawn and Steve could do nothing to comfort him without getting chewed out.

Once, dream Bucky had told him that he sometimes found it hard to deal with Steve being stronger, faster, even taller than him, because he still wanted to protect him. It made him feel useless, jealous of the fact that Steve's goodness, which he had seen all along, was now so obvious everyone was suddenly fighting to be near him, to know him. Steve didn't entirely enjoy hearing his own ego saying that, but there were occasional signs in the real world that he was right and that Bucky was grappling with a sense of uselessness in the face of Steve taking command. Coupled with his obvious difficulty in dealing with memories of his time in captivity, Steve could hardly blame Bucky for having occasional black moods. And dream Bucky always came around to him soon enough those nights, when he wanted to comfort him the most, always more in need of being touched, carressed and hugged than usual.

Steve quickly came to live for the nights where he could hold dream Bucky until his shakes went away and he was pliant and easy in his arms. There was almost no transistion between this and the easy necking and gentle kisses that spilled out of him, which were reciprocated without question. It felt so natural he barely had the grace to feel ashamed of himself whenever he woke and had to face the real Bucky at breakfast, the Commandos all talking in crude terms around them while he carefully schooled his features into friendly placidity. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice his furtive glances toward his friend, Bucky least of all. And it wasn't as if Steve had any intentions of letting anything untoward of that nature carry through into reality, where all hell would break loose if he so much as pecked Bucky on the cheek. It was all just harmless fancy.

"Why do I keep dreaming about this flea pit?" dream Bucky asked one night, a sweep of restlessness in his demeanour hitting seemingly without warning. "Why am I always here? Why can't I fucking leave?" Without warning, he kicked the side of the couch and started pacing the room, while Steve sat at the table by the windows, watching, not knowing what to say. "I should be seeing godamned showgirls, naked showgirls, and my folks' house, and their dogs, and baseball games. Not this shithole. Not... _you_."

"Sorry, I guess," Steve offered, uncertainly, ducking his head a little.

"Don't do that. You're so... so fucking... I want old Steve back. I hate this."

"What brought this on?"

"You just... you give me everything I hate myself for wanting and... all of this is... it's not real. It's messing with my mind." Without warning, Bucky was kicking at the apartment door and rattling the handle with all his strength. "Godamnit, let me the hell out!"

Steve had no idea how to react, except that his instinct was to pull Bucky back. He'd never seen him try the door before, so he wasn't entirely sure why he couldn't open it, when Steve always came in that way. He instinctively put a hand on Bucky's back, only for it to be shucked off and for his friend to push him away, angrily. "Stop it, stop doing that. Just let me out will ya!"

"It's not a good idea Buck..."

"I need to go! I need to know what's out there! You can't... you can't lock me away from it forever."

"Alright, alright, just..." Steve began, not entirely sure what he was trying to say, approaching slowly. He pulled the handle of the door and it opened easily first try. "Just let me..."

Bucky was out like a shot, running out into the fire.

"Wait!" Steve called after him, but he lost sight of him almost instantly in the smokey ruins of the endless labyrinth beyond. He paused to wonder why his mind was doing this, forcing him out of the safety of their apartment, making Bucky suddenly angry with him for no apparent reason. He'd been feeling perfectly content, sketching out a memory he had of all the clothes hanging on the lines which strung all the tenement blocks together across the street. It made no sense.

Of course, he went after Bucky all the same. The ghosts of the fanatical HYDRA soldiers which roamed the place looking for him were no match for him anyway, they were just irritating. He also had no wish to revisit the central hub where the Red Skull lurked, since he still couldn't quite figure out how he'd seen that hideous face in his nightmares long before he'd ever known it belonged to Johann Schmidt, except to guess he must have seen something in the serum files he'd read way back when his eyesight wasn't so good and there was a lot to look at. It bothered him on some level.

Sure enough though, the sound of Wagner and the wet clipping noises of fists drew him back toward that central sanctum where Schmidt roamed, and he ran into the middle of a fight.

"What did you do to me you son of a bitch?" Bucky was screaming at him, throwing clumsy punches, ducking any corresponding hits the way Steve had seen him dodge about in back alleys. "Tell me!"

"Oh mein junge, my darling boy," Schmidt was teasing, infuriating Bucky further, "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind." The burning visage struck like a snake and Bucky was suddenly lifted into the air by his throat, Schmidt laughing wildly as he turned to Steve. "Captain America! And there I thought you were cowering in hiding. Ah ah ah," he warned him against coming closer, squeezing Bucky's throat all the more, making him grimace and claw at his hand. "This one belongs to me."

"Let him go," Steve growled, immediately getting swept up in the moment.

"So you think you saved him? You think he's on your side?" Schmidt tapped his other hand on Bucky's chest, grinning terribly. "He's a coiled snake, ready to strike. He's the property of HYDRA now. Another head of the beast. You'll see, my dear Captain. You'll see!"

In a second, Steve was on him, kicking him square on the chest so that he ricoched backwards across the room. Bucky was dropped unceremoniously to the floor only to land in an unmoving heap. While Steve considered punching the Red Skull out, he had no desire to remain there any longer than necessary. So he picked up his friend and ran out, the monster's laughter ringing in his ears, his taunts echoing behind them.

Even though Bucky was a dead weight in his arms, he still felt remarkably light. The not-quite-logic of being in a dream, where fire felt hot but didn't burn, and corridors could rearrange themselves at will, apparently also applied to gravity. Steve ignored the stomping sounds of the soldiers marching somewhere neaby and kept going until he found the door to their apartment, Bucky light as a feather all the way.

He burst in, slamming the door behind him, and immediately sat down on the old couch, cradling Bucky close. His friend was staring ahead, unblinking, unresponsive.

"Come on, buddy," he muttered, and kissed him on the forehead. "Come back to me. It's alright. I promise, it's alright." Steve pulled him even closer and craned his neck in order to kiss him properly, feeling a desperate need to comfort him and to be close to him.

That at least caused Bucky to stir, his eyes to focus again. "You shouldn't," he whispered.

"I want to."

"Why?"

Steve stroked his cheek and nuzzled at his hair. "Me and you against the world, Buck, remember? Needing you is like needing oxygen. Can't help breathing in."

"Sap," Bucky responded and almost smiled. "I'm sorry, I should have stayed here. Just... I'm scared Steve. Something's wrong with me. I can hear him talking to me sometimes in my head, and I hate it. He won't tell me what he did to me."

"Nothing's wrong with you."

Bucky pulled him down and kissed him, hard, with intent and meaning than left Steve reeling. "Old Father West wouldn't say so if he could see me now, right? A nance, stuck on my best friend. No don't say anything. I want to pretend a while longer."

"Pretend what?"

"That this is real."

Steve got that sentiment pretty well, and he was more than happy to let Bucky pull him close in order to really kiss him like he meant it. Unfortunately, before he even really knew it, Bucky had faded out of the dream and he was alone again.

He woke up fairly abruptly that night and bolted straight out of his tent, over to Bucky and Dum Dum's, without so much as a second thought of why. The light was dim and the trees they were sheltering under blocked any small help from the moon, but the serum had given Steve pretty good night vision. He was surprised to see Falsworth up and about, heading back from the perimeter.

"Evening Captain," the impeccably accented Englishman greeted him at a whisper, gas lantern in one hand and his cap in the other.

"Off shift?"

"A little earlier than planned. The Sarge took over."

Steve nodded, briskly. "Alright. Night Monty," he said, and headed out to the scout post. He didn't have his boots on or anything but the ground was bone dry and he didn't feel the cold like he used to. It wasn't that he had any intention of talking to Bucky, he was just struck by an irrational urge to see him.

He was at the designated watch point, as expected. Steve held back, staying quiet, not wanting to alert Bucky to the fact that he was there. He watched his friend as he idly carved up a tree branch with his combat knife, as if working out some note of annoyance that wasn't quite visible on his face in the darkness.

Just as Steve decided it was time he went back to his tent, Bucky's head snapped up and he threw the knife. It stuck itself into a tree right ahead with a twang. Then Bucky drew his backup knife, threw that in quick succession too, and stared at the result.

The second knife had embedded perfectly in the handle of the first with an even louder twang, creating a chain of two that almost seemed to defy gravity.

"Whaddaya make of that, Steve?" Bucky asked, and turned to him, making it pretty clear he'd heard him standing there all along.

"Nice shot," Steve replied, not really knowing what else to say, a little breathless at the sight. He wasn't even sure _he_ could do that.

Bucky snorted out a bitter bark of a laugh. "I had the worst aim in the company when I landed in England, you know," he said, like he was confessing something. "Guns, knives, bayonets even. Didn't have the concentration for it. It's easy now. Calculate the angles, the wind resistance, move fast, don't think, don't hesitate."

Steve moved a little closer, sensing it would be a good idea to come keep his friend company, given the odd mood he seemed to be in.

"Jesus Christ Steve, where's your boots?" Bucky suddenly snapped at him. "What would your Ma say, you wandering around in the night with nothing on your feet?"

"Not so likey to catch my death anymore." Steve shrugged, unable to keep the smile from his face. He always got a pang of something in his chest whenever Bucky did that; tried to take care of him. Not that he'd ever admit it.

"What are you doing out here anyway? Don't need your beauty sleep no more either?"

"Not so much actually."

"That explains the face."

"Jerk," he said, and grinned.

"Punk," Bucky responded, as he always did, though this time he sounded a little more melancholy than usual. He turned away from Steve, rubbing his forehead, wearily. "Best you go back to bed. We've got that possible HYDRA base to scope out tomorrow, you know. If the Cap ain't on form, the boys won't be either."

Although he wanted to stay a while longer, Steve knew when he was being dismissed; knew when Bucky wanted to be alone. It wasn't like the days when they'd done almost everything together over in Brooklyn, a couple of carefree stupid kids. A year apart and a war had changed them both and he got why Bucky couldn't be the way he was all the time anymore, he really did. Steve wasn't exactly the same person either, even if he wore his new skin a little better.

He turned to head back to the tents, but a small voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Steve... you know I'm with you, right? Against HYDRA I mean. As in..." Bucky growled inwardly, finding hard to say what he wanted to say and chastising himself for it. "Aw hell."

Though he wanted desperately to crawl against him and kiss away the worried lines in his brow, Steve had to settle for moving and putting a firm hand on his shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. "Hey, if I'm sure of anything, it's that you're with me. End of the line, remember?"

"You and me against the world," Bucky muttered in return, echoing a promise Steve had made a few times back in Brooklyn when he was a skinny kid and Bucky had been the one patching up his scrapes, pitching in on his medicines, keeping him going when he couldn't find work. A funny expression came over his face, though it was gone so fast it might have been imagined.

Steve swallowed, hard, trying not to let anything show in his eyes. "Yeah. Exactly."

The moment passed between them the way it always did; an unspoken bond, stronger than family or blood, stronger than anything, though it went carefully unnamed, that tingled over Steve's fingers and chest. "Would you..." Bucky began just as Steve pulled away, and then cleared his throat, looking aside, "would you promise me something, Steve?"

"Sure Buck."

"If they... I won't be captured alive again. I'll do what I have to. If that's how things go, I need you to go live a proper life, you know, when the war's over."

Steve's heart clenched and then lurched sideways at those words.

Something must have shown in his face, because Bucky continued on at a faster speed, rambling. "Carter's a great girl. Shit taste in men, mind, but that's lucky for you. You could do all that stuff you wanted to back before all this happened. Mr Rogers, with the wife and family. You'd be good at it you know..."

"Shut up," he snapped, way harder than he meant to. "I won't let them take you again," Steve promised, firmly, "so don't you dare go doing anything stupid. I don't care if a mission goes bad. I'd get you back from them, same as you would me. Besides, we're turning the tide of this war. Could all be over by Christmas."

Bucky finally cracked a smile that looked a little genuine. "Pretty sure that's what they said in '39. But hey, they didn't have Captain America in '39 I guess!"

"Damn right," Steve said with a chuckle and exchanged a meaningful nod with Bucky; speaking silently as they sometimes did, confirming the promises they'd just made through all the palling around.

He went back to his tent feeling a little better, but there was no way to go back to sleep now. Not with Bucky's words echoing in his thoughts.

_I'll do what I have to._  
_I'll do what I have to._  
_I'll do what I have to. I won't let them take me again._

"Not happening," he muttered to himself; his own promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The knife thing is inspired by that scene in King Arthur, where Hugh Dancy throws a knife and Mads Mikkelsen easily throws one right into the handle: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iDn73FUW1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iDn73FUW1M)


	3. Chapter 3

For one awful, long minute, that stretched out and out, Steve was sure it was over. Either Bucky was dead, or the three or four HYDRA guys who'd escaped in armoured cars had somehow dragged him along with them and taken him hostage. The base, which they'd established as a training ground for their intelligence agents and a go to safehouse for a few low level scientists, was basically a smoking pile of rubble after the operatives had hit the red button and blew it up, rather than let their secrets be taken.

They'd got some intel out of the place before their presence triggered an alert, but Dum Dum and Dernier had got stuck and barely made it out. As for Bucky, he'd been sniping from an upper balcony, keeping out of sight but delivering instant death to anyone who got too close to spotting them moving around the pipeworks and tanks inside to get to the inner core.

Steve had heard a lot of noise, thought maybe the upper levels were collapsing, but he hadn't seen where the structure was caving in. A lower level of the base that they hadn't previously spotted was spewing black clad soldiers like a blocked sink and they were all having to fight their way through them in close quarters.

It was a bit more chaotic than it should have been. Their original plan hadn't taken into account the numbers of guys hiding in that hole and the way the place was wired to destruct in a quick cascade. Once a path was clear, Steve counted his men out of the escape hatch, _one, two, three..._ he ran back in to help Dum Dum carry the injured Dernier out, smoke billowing, _four, five..._ the crashing sound of complete structural collapse, someone pulled him away by the arm and they all had to run to avoid being buried.

Once clear, Steve stood on the tree clad hilly incline which had been concealing the base, his breath visible in the winter cold, staring at the remnants of the HYDRA base in shock. "Bucky," he breathed.

"Shit," Dum Dum muttered.

"I saw two other escape routes running off the main area," Falsworth announced, seriously, "plus there were windows on the upper deck. He might have made it out."

Steve was frozen, staring at the bricks and the fire, his heart pounding.

"Jim, take care of Jacques," Dum Dum ordered, stepping up urgently. "Monty, Gabe, we gotta go check. Cap? _Cap?_ "

He blinked and stared at them. Someone put their hand on his arm and the touch thankfully shook him out of it. "Right." Steve felt very small and ineffectual, all of sudden, the way he did before the serum boosted him to superhuman status. Blood rushing in his ears, his mind was a cacophany of thoughts, _if I've got him killed, no can't be, no, he can't be dead, what have I done, no please no..._

The three of them ran back, his loyal Commandos pushing past their obvious exhaustion to seek out one of their own.

"This side, I think he was this side of the building when it came down," Falsworth yelled out, directing them, looking for the escape paths he'd claimed to have noticed before, trying to gauge whether any of the openings were free of rubble.

"Separate, move around. Eyes open!" Dum Dum added.

Steve was so grateful; pathetically so, when Morita shrieked up about seeing a hand sticking out of one of the collapsed exits. He knew he was weeping, tracks running down his cheeks through the dirt and dust. He didn't care. Steve threw those bricks aside like an Olympic shot putter, shifting them faster and further than the other men combined, moving on instinct, adrenalin pumping.

Finally, _finally_ , he was able to slide Bucky out.

But his vision fuzzed and, in a split frame flash, it wasn't Bucky. It was a HYDRA Agent in a dirtied white coat; one of the scientists. The man was dead, the back of his head a compacted mess of blood and bone. They all stared at the mangled body in a unison of horrified silence.

Then, there was a scuffle from aside, and Bucky was there, barely standing and covered in dirt, but alive. "Hey fellas," he said and coughed, showing off teeth stained red and blood running down his lips.

Steve ran to him and caught him as he collapsed, lifting him like a child. "Bucky, thank God," he gasped, "oh thank God!"

"Aah," Bucky whimpered weakly at the movement, cradling his ribs, "hurts."

"Sorry sorry! Oh God, how did you...?"

"Born lucky, I guess," he said, and passed clean out.

They beat the retreat straight away, heading back to the Jeep hidden in the trees a hundred yards from the target site. Dernier was still conscious, though he'd taken a nasty knife slash to the hip that wouldn't stop bleeding. While the other Commandoes kept him going, one foot in front of the other, Steve carried Bucky in his arms, careful not to jostle him too much but afraid to take it slow. He could feel his forehead against his neck, the solid weight of his toned body connecting to his as if it were part of him, which in some ways it was. It gave him his focus back.

The men were silent on the drive back to the camp. There was enough medical equipment stored there to get everyone stable and up to scratch, but it was obvious that they needed to head back to friendly territory to get proper medical attention straight away. That meant a forty mile drive through some dense woodlands and tundras. Naturally, Steve drove, going faster than was remotely safe, the men exchanging glances and holding on tight.

Thankfully, they didn't run into any enemy foxholes en rout, and were able to make it to the main army base they'd set off from without further trouble. Bucky and Dernier were put on stretchers and taken to the medical tents by the soldiers there and Steve was led to the command tent to report to Colonel Phillips. Captain America gave a clear and concise report of the HYDRA base's operations, the intelligence gained and the unfortunate self destruction, but at the end of his report, Phillips gave him a softer look than usual and ordered him to get some rest. The rest of his unit were either getting their cuts and bruises seen to or had already crashed.

Steve went straight to the medical tent for a report. The surgeon there diagnosed some broken ribs and nasty concusion for Bucky before he went off to put stitches in Jacques' hip. Since the tent was fairly busy, Steve wasn't able to sit with him or anything, but he did at least manage to lightly brush a hand over his arm, even though he wanted to touch his face more than anything. "I'll be back," he told him, quietly, so no one else would hear their business.

His position had given him the privilege of his own tent at the camp at least. Steve was able to wash up in private and get as much of the grime off his skin as he could before falling into his bed. Even supersoldiers can get bone weary in the right circumstances, he had discovered. But it wasn't an issue; he was positively desperate to sucumb in the hope of being able to speak to his mental version of Bucky at least, to kiss him and hold him and reassure himself that he was alive.

Sure enough, he was back in the fiery maze. He found his way to the apartment in a hurry and burst in through the front door, feeling a rush of anticipation and hope.

Bucky was by the window, arms folded across his chest, staring out at the apocalypic view. He turned his head to Steve and smiled, softly.

The light was falling on him just right, making the artist in Steve swoon and swell inside. That boyish face, the hardened body of a soldier and a heart of gold that shone so brightly Steve could feel it calling to him wherever he went. Steve knew that this man was his everything; start, middle and end. No matter that he'd never be more than his best pal outside of the sanctum of his dreamings, it was no less true.

"Don't you dare do that to me again," Steve whimpered and ran to him. He grabbed him and pulled him close, kissing him almost hard enough to bruise. "Do you hear me?" he asked between his breathless affections. "You stupid jerk, I'm nothing without you! Nothing!"

"Steve," Bucky sighed, clinging on in return, moulding his body against Steve's like they were made to fit together. "Sorry."

Everything was hands moving around him and pressure, Bucky feeling strangely solid in the twilight world of Steve's lucid dreaming. Their kisses were a conversation of their own, filled with desperation and apologies. Steve poured himself into it, drowning in his overwhelming feelings for the man who'd been by his side through everything and who he'd loved before he even knew what love was supposed to feel like. Much as he found Peggy Carter impressive, beautiful to the core, and everything he always pictured wanting in his boldest fantasies of being a husband and father one day - the absolute dame of his dreams - there was nothing he could do about the way he also longed to be close to Bucky night and day, to kiss him, to know what it would be like to have that level of love returned.

The Bucky of his dreams palmed at the heat growing in his slacks and he could feel the tingle of excitement building between his legs, his hips swaying almost involuntarily.

"I don't know why I'm this way with you, Steve," Bucky gasped between kisses, "it's not right, I know it's not..."

"Don't say that... natural as breathing..." he said, shuddering against his hand for the little waves of pleasure washing over him, clinging to Bucky for deal life.

"Tell me... tell me how you feel the same, I want to hear it so much."

"I _ah_ I love you, I do, _ah_ I don't care why or how..." He was straining now, so hard, near out of his mind with need as Bucky kissed along his neck. "It's all I know how to feel... never stops _ah_ always loved you Buck, always, since we were kids even..."

His words seemed to please Bucky, his caresses ever more urgent. "You wanna know why I used to take you out on all those double dates, even though you hated 'em?"

"To show off?" Steve's chuckle was broken by a gasp as Bucky applied another bit of pressure between his legs.

"No. It meant I could pretend... pretend that you were my date. I didn't give a shit about the girls." He laughed and nuzzled Steve's ear. "Sick in the head, you see. Out of my mind in love with you, Steve Rogers. Skinny or strong. In sickness and in health. I'll always be smitten with you. _My_ Steve."

His name, the words, sent a spike of pleasure through Steve that made him suddenly crest and spill. To think that a guy like Bucky could ever have wanted him when he was, well, a short skinny loser that no girl looked twice at, it sent fireworks through his central nervous system, even if it was just the idle expression of a half realised dream. Bucky kissed his jaw through it and shared his stuttering breaths afterwards, gently, reverently.

Steve woke up suddenly, his heart caught mid-contraction at the pain of what he just experienced being no more than a mere fancy, uncomfortably sticky and with a sensation like a stone plumetting in his stomach. He lay on his bedroll for a while, staring up into the darkness, awash with guilt at just how far his subconsciousness was taking things suddenly. It hadn't been much to worry about when all it had been was kissing and being free with his friend that way, but it felt like almost a disservice to the real Bucky to be going so much further, when of course the guy had no such feelings towards him. It wasn't like an idle fantasy either; these lucid dreams were nearest thing to real he'd ever known while asleep. It was practically like being with him.

After cleaning himself off and taking a moment to look at the compass with Peggy's photo in it, refocusing on her with a small huff of desperation, he bedded back down and let himself drift back to sleep, back to the tunnels.

He headed straight back to the apartment, as always, now doing it on instinct. This time, he was dismayed to find Bucky standing at the door of the apartment's back bedroom, arms wrapped around himself, forehead resting on the wood. They'd ended up sharing it after Bucky had pushed him to come live with him after his mother died, and when the couch got too much for Bucky's back to take full time, but Steve hadn't tried to go in there since he'd had that fright with finding Zola's lab in there.

"Back," Steve said, probably unnecessarily. He got no reaction, so he circled around the couch and went to him, settling his palm in the small of Bucky's back. And damn it, if the muscle there didn't feel warm and real. "Hey. Whatcha doing?"

"Want to lie down but there's nothing in there but my fucking nightmares."

Steve took his hand and pulled him into a hug, enjoying the way his height now allowed him nuzzle at Bucky's temple, the way his long arms could completely enclose him.

"Mm, feel a little better," Bucky hummed. "Why'd you disappear on me?"

"Um, maybe not used to, well... surprises," Steve coughed, blushing.

A wicked smile passed over Bucky's features as he pulled back to look him in the eye. "You know, if this were real, I'd have surprised you even more and cleaned you off with my tongue."

"Jesus Buck, you... where'd you get that mouth?"

"You haven't seen half what it does yet, Rogers." To prove his point, Bucky leaned forward as if to kiss him and instead nipped at his lip. "Would you ever let me be free with you like that? Like you'd let a dame?"

Steve shuddered a little in response. "I'd let you do anything," he breathed, "so long as you promise not to let any more HYDRA buildings land on you. I don't care to get scared like that again, thank you kindly."

The gentle nips and kisses died and Bucky was drawing back, staring at him strangely. Steve had being going for levity but he had clearly not quite made it. "That really bothered you, didn't it?" Bucky asked.

"Are you kidding? I about felt my heart stop. I near froze to the spot until Dum Dum pushed me onwards."

"This is war, Steve. There are no happy endings," Bucky pulled away, muttering something under his breath which Steve couldn't quite catch, but which sounded like, _still a punk even when I'm dreaming_. "Chances are pretty high that only one of us is getting out of this if any of us are, and you're the one with the supersoldier body..."

A little flash of anger, like a burst vein, hit Steve hard. "Why are you always saying this stuff, Buck...?" In his mind, he was talking to the Bucky he'd spoken to that night when he'd been throwing knives at trees; the Bucky who told him flat out that he'd kill himself before being captured again.

"Because it bothers me that you don't seem to get it." Bucky huffed a laugh, pacing, agitated, balling his hands up into fists. "You have no idea..." he began, and then shook his head, starting again at more of a whisper. "You have no idea what they did to me Steve. Zola, Schmidt... Sixteen men, good men, died on that table before they dragged me in. A 'triumph' they called me. Fucking hell. What does that mean?"

Steve had heard about the sixteen men that went into the isolation ward and never came back before Bucky was taken there from Monty and Gabe. It wasn't that he'd snooped, he just needed to know what he was dealing with, as much as could be figured out without confronting Bucky about what had gone on in that room. It felt a bit peverse hearing his psyche put that conversation into Bucky's mouth, but it made a certain amount of sense, since he'd been pretty traumatised and cut up by the whole thing too. If Howard and Peggy hadn't have helped him get there so quickly, well... Steve didn't like to think about that, even though sometimes he couldn't help it on days when he looked at Bucky and saw the face of the boy he'd known behind the wearier, harder version of a man fighting a war.

Instead of arguing, he went and stood by the door to the bedroom and reached his hand to Bucky. "Come here."

"What? Why?"

"I say it's time we got rid of that room."

Bucky fixed him with a lopsided frown, but took his hand all the same and allowed Steve to draw him to his side, though he still looked at the door with a wary sort of contempt.

"This is all just a dream, right? So all it should take is some focus." He stared at the door, imagining the awful lab behind it, then imagining it crackling at the edges and peeling away, like an old photo over a fire, to reveal the bedroom they'd come to share as best pals those few years ago. Steve tried to recall the detail of the room, with the double bed in the middle and the windows covered by sackclothes rather than curtains, the old mahoghany closet standing sentry by the door and the bedside table with the lamp that Bucky was always dusting off to make sure the it wouldn't ever irritate Steve's lungs. "I remember it was always a bit dark in there, but it always smelled real clean, 'cause the girl at the Laundromat was sweet on you so you got to put our stuff in with hers," he said, reminding himself of every aspect he could think of. "And it was always so draughty in winter, but I liked being in bed best then 'cause I had an excuse to curl up next to you for warmth, instead of staying to my side, making sure not to touch."

He heard Bucky chuckle next to him. "I'd have rolled you closer all the time if I thought you'd have let me. I was scared of getting punched. You always had a mean swing for a little fella."

"I remember the way the bed kind of creaked and you always complained about it. Said you could never bring girls back home 'cause of it."

"Yeah, _that_ was the reason it bugged me."

"You slept on the left. You were always on my left. I still wake up reaching left, wherever I am."

"Huh. No kidding?"

Steve sneaked a peak aside and was happy to see that Bucky was smiling again. He looked less bothered about the door and what he thought lay behind it now and Steve took that as a good sign that this might work.

"Okay, let's try this," he said, the image now fixed in his mind. But on attempting to open the door, he found it still locked to him. He guessed it was probably because he always considered the room Bucky's, since the whole apartment was being rented on his dime and that room was the most private part of it. For whatever reason, that translated into him not being able to open it alone.

"Let me," Bucky said, quietly, and reached for the handle with a solemn motion. He was holding his breath as it slowly turned in his grasp, and he actually stepped back as the door swung open.

They stood side by side for a moment, staring in. Steve audibly sighed with relief on seeing the bedroom there, instead of the torture chamber, and then laughed at his own reaction.

"Well, would you look at that." Bucky was echoing his reaction and grinning. "Guess I can go lie down now after all."

He stepped inside and went to the foot of the bed. Then he turned around and gave Steve a look. "Care to warm up a little?"

Steve was across the threshold before he even knew what he was doing. He knew there were reasons, good reasons, solid reasons which he'd thought about before, which made giving into his urges with Bucky, even in his dreams, a very bad idea. If only he could remember them.


	4. Chapter 4

Of course, Bucky was right. That happy ending really was never on the cards. Steve learned it the hardest way possible.

Many years into the future, he would look back and marvel at how his Commandos kept it private, the way he'd fallen apart on that train. Gabe did all the work, capturing Zola and forcing him to redirect the train. The rest of the Commandos eventually found Captain America in the corner of the train compartment with the enormous hole in the side, curled into a ball, near catatonic with grief. The moment Bucky fell, that terrified look, his piercing cry for help, his reaching hand, it all kept replaying in his mind. The pain in his chest was unreal; Steve was no stranger to loss but this was something else. It was breathtaking.

He'd been so close, their hands had nearly touched. If that bar had held another few seconds, Bucky would have been saved. Instead, he was lying at the bottom of a freezing ravine. He was dead. _Dead._ And Steve was paralysed with fear at the thought, like he was still that sickly kid Bucky had taken under his wing, who felt like he was living every day on borrowed time except when Bucky was there, laughing with him, caring for him, taking him on adventures around the neighbourhood. He'd felt ice cold to the core and so damned scared he'd shut down.

Steve had almost no memory of being taken off the train and then being driven to a plane. He couldn't recall the flight back to France at all, save refusing all offers of food or drink. The spike of pain he'd felt when he headed to the Commandos' tent, to the corner where Bucky's bed was, was the first thing he did when he really woke up; there was nothing there except a razor, a comb, a palm mirror and a half empty box of rollup cigarettes with some stray matches in a box under the bed, next to his empty army suitcase. Everything was laundered while his Unit was away, as always, and so smelled of starch and soap, not of him. Bucky wasn't the sort to keep a diary and he had no one back to home write to, so as far as Steve knew. That meant there was nothing left, just a few scattered items which could have belonged to any soldier.

"We're uh, we're all heading to the Tavern in the next town over to drink a toast to the Sarge," he heard Dum Dum say from somewhere behind him, quietly. "You should come."

Next thing he knew, he was driving, but not to the next town over. He vaguely recalled throwing some undeserving mechanic off the car and almost driving through the base barrier in his hurry to get away. Steve had no idea where he was going until he arrived in some village or town which had clearly been on the hard end of a recent bombing campaign, where he could still taste the smoke and sulphur in the air.

He stopped at the first tavern he found with some alcohol still left behind the bar, put a table and chair back where they might have been once before the whole place was reduced to a mess of fallen beams and charred bricks, and he sat and starred for a few hours, wondering what would happen if the bombing campaign started up again, wondering if he'd mind.

At some point, he started drinking and drinking. Hours went by, he felt no difference. A sinking feeling of desperation settled over him and he redoubled his efforts, but it wouldn't work. Nothing seemed to be able to dull that pain in his chest. He imagined every possible scenario where Bucky survived; a reality where let him get discharged after his time at HYDRA's hands; where he hadn't taken that fool risk with the train; where he hadn't let that HYDRA trooper with the blaster knock him down, leaving Bucky to take him on. So many different ways things might have ended differently.

Then Peggy was there, somehow, miraculously. He was reminded, yet again, that there was a reason she had impressed him so deeply. She was strong, so strong, and he didn't want her to see him cry. No one, least of all Peggy Carter, needed to know that the loss he felt was not simply the loss of losing a friend, but a heartache that nothing could ever heal.

_You could do all that stuff you wanted to back before all this happened. Mr Rogers, with the wife and family. You'd be good at it you know..._

He could hear Bucky's voice in his mind, clear as a bell.

_If that's how things go, I need you to go live a proper life, you know, when the war's over..._

Steve knew that Bucky wouldn't stand for him moping around. He always told Steve that a great life could await him, even when he was at death's door, if he just believed it. So he listened to Peggy, went with Peggy, and decided that he would do right by Peggy... for Bucky's sake.

But he couldn't sleep. He had to wait for all encompassing exhaustion to outweigh the all consuming fear he felt at the prospect of sleeping, going to that lucid place and not finding Bucky there. Or worse, going there and seeing him, being free to reach out and touch him again, and then having to wake up knowing it was just a mirage.

When he did finally succumb, the fire there was worse than ever. The blurred streets of New York were burning like never before and the HYDRA base corridors he now knew so well were stifflingly hot. Time was always deceiving and strange in the dream world and Steve thought he went around and around them for hours, hearing the Red Skull's insane laughter and the Wagner opera echoing all around him like it was part of the fire and smoke, before finding the door at last. When he made the choice to go inside, he discovered that it was frozen shut, ice bleeding out from it along the walls, wandering cold unfurling from the thin crack along the bottom. There was no way inside anyway and it was devastating.

Steve came face to face with the Red Skull for real only days later, in the main deck of a plane filled with bombs and he felt nothing as he fought and defeated him. It was a joyless task. Not even difficult really. And when he realised there was no way to stop the plane except to put it down into the freezing ocean before the payload in its belly could kill millions of people, he actually felt relieved. It was so fitting; a hero's death, a gallant promise of a last dance with the woman history would record him as loving, while he went to sleep, down in the ice with Bucky, a promise fulfilled.

When he opened his eyes, he felt light, like a tremendous weight had been lifted from his chest. He was in Brooklyn, in a park ten or so blocks away from their apartment. There was no fire anymore and and the HYDRA facility was nowhere to be seen. Instead, cold had crept in and replaced the heat. The ground, the playground, all the buildings had the thin white sheen of ice on their surfaces, making them appear glassy and ethereal.

On balance, Steve preferred it; the cold was kind of soothing. He remembered the plunge into the water and embracing the initial spike of pain and then the darkness coming towards him from just beyond it.

"Wait for me, Buck," was the last thing he thought before it took him, so waking up in Brooklyn, even cold as it was, felt like the answer to a prayer.

Steve ran through the empty streets, where the dry ice was rolling here and there, past the shops he remembered and by all the hinted echoes of the places he'd been to as he grew up. Everything was right where it should be and he couldn't stop grinning.

So what if the cold was quickly seeping into his bones, and he could feel it under his skin; Steve didn't care. He knew exactly where he was going and he had a newfound faith that he wouldn't be alone there anymore. After all, this time he wasn't dreaming and that meant that this place was his reward. The afterlife. Or something like it.

Without the labyrinth of corridors, he didn't need to think to find his way home. He ran to the tenement block they'd made their home so long ago and up to the third floor, up the steps that used to hurt his lungs to climb when he'd been a much smaller guy. There was the door he knew so well, still glazed with cold and ice, like a silent and still painting on the wall.

Steve didn't expect to be able to open it straightaway of course. He expected the resistance that the handle gave. But there was one very important difference here; in this hallway, the crucial detail of the welcome mat was preserved and that, of course, was where the spare key was. He reached under and pulled it out of the edge of the hewn fabric with utmost confidence.

Only when he came to slip it in the lock did he feel a wave of anxiety. The old what ifs were there; what if Bucky wasn't there, what if he _was_. But Steve steeled his resolve. He had to trust that this was what he had wanted when he sunk that plane, that he was inside his memories of Brooklyn now for a reason. So he turned the key firmly, slipped it into his pocket and pushed the door open.

Inside was warm. He didn't realise just how cold he was until he stepped in and slammed the door closed behind him. The front room was exactly as it was before, just like in his formative dreams, which were themselves modelled on a place he remembered with more fondness than was probably deserved.

And there, at the table, back turned to him, leaning over the radio, was Bucky.

Steve let out a breath he didn't even realise he was holding. "Buck," he said, and it came out like a sob.

The radio was making a static sound which whirred up and down as he adjusted the nob on the top, the vague faraway sound of voices coming over the frequency every now and then.

"Buck?" Steve tried again, approaching slowly. He noticed that Bucky wasn't wearing his uniform, or even the suit he used to wear when he was earning his dollars. He was wearing something more resembling an old hospital smock, hewn in brown and far too big for him, with short brown pants underneath. There was something in the way he was sitting, half lolling to one side, head lowered, that set Steve on edge.

As he drew closer, the voices came together a little, though it was still indecipherable. They were deep, slurring, and after a moment of thought he recognised the language he was hearing inside the static as Russian.

"Bucky, it's me," he said and put a hand on his stone cold shoulder.

Bucky yelped and leapt aside as if stung, back hitting the wall, his eyes staring wildly in shock, heavy breaths coming in staccato punches. His lips looked blue and his hair was sticking out every which way.

"Whoa whoa, it's okay. It's just me." Steve held his hands up, trying to look unthreatening. "It's Steve. Steve, remember?"

The only response he got was Bucky tensing even more as he approached and then disappearing into thin air.

The voices on the radio suddenly grew louder and then the sound zipped to a close, leaving nothing but silence, as stunned as Steve felt, in its wake.

Maybe it was something to do with the fall, he reasoned, much as it made no real sense at all to him. Maybe the shock of it had somehow carried over into this next life; after all, Steve had been calm and cognisant of what he was doing and had welcomed the freezing cold water when it clogged up his lungs and settled around his body. Bucky hadn't had that chance.

The view through the window showed a Brooklyn caught in a still cold winter but it looked clearer than it had when he'd been seeing it in flames in his dreams. It soothed him, but only a little. Steve did a walk around the apartment, through the bedroom, and back into the living area. It looked right, felt right. He opened the table drawer and pulled out his art supplies and they were all there. Everything was in place.

Except for the one thing he wanted; his friend.

Time was just as strange there as it was in his dream version, but it didn't seem to be all that long before he sensed a presence in the room again. Steve had been sitting at the window, idly sketching something he'd probably have discarded. He paused, took a breath, and turned in the chair very slowly, appearing as non-threatening as possible.

Bucky was watching him from across the room, back against the wall again, though this time he was less tense. "You're back?" he asked.

"I didn't leave."

His expression twisted in confusion. "Is this place yours?"

"No, it's yours. Well, it was ours I suppose." Steve could see the lack of recognition in his eyes. "This was our apartment in the 30s. You invited me to stay after my Ma died and I guess I never really left." He considered getting up, approaching, but he didn't want to spook him. "I used to dream about this place a lot after I was given the serum. I guess, if I was to pick some sort of heaven, this would be it. Dreamed about you too a lot, Bucky. Hoped you be here." For the absence of an answer, he decided to continue. Rambling worked better for him than silence and he got the sense that Bucky was hanging on his every word. "I didn't survive a week before I put a plane down in the ocean. Followed you down into the ice. Never was very bright without you around."

Though Bucky still looked at him like his words made no sense, Steve could tell he was loosening up a little. Curiosly, one of his arms was hanging limply, while the other braced against the wall, making him look somewhat lopsided. Steve couldn't hazard a guess as to why. Just as the odd loose clothes, like something russled up from a military hospital, were like nothing he'd ever seen before and made no sense.

"Do you remember what happened to you, Bucky? The train?"

"Train?" he muttered, a flicker of recognition.

"Yes. Zola's train. You remember? We were on a mission in the Alps. We ziplined down onto it and went through the storage cabins to get to the front section. There was a HYDRA soldier on the way there with some sort of energy weapon. Knocked you clean out of the side of the carriage. I uh, I tried to reach for you, but you fell before I could grab your hand."

"I fell."

"You remember?"

Bucky looked aside, distantly. "It was cold," he said. "I landed here. I found... I found here and it was warm." He rubbed his working hand over his face and through his hair.

"Yeah me too. It may not be much, but it's home, I guess." He couldn't bear to stay sat down any longer, he had to move closer. "You know this place, right? Our apartment, in Brooklyn. A few blocks from where we grew up? You remember?"

Bucky stared at him for a moment and then gently shook his head. "Got my senses knocked from me, I guess. No wait," he crooked his head to one side, thinking hard, "sometimes... sometimes. Little memories... Feelings." He stepped forward, near closing the gap between them; not that he appeared to notice. "I remember... laughter... music on the radio... and..."

"And?" Steve moved a little closer, willing him to say his name, daring to hope. Unthinkingly, he put a hand on Bucky's forearm, and immediately realised his mistake. "Sorry, sorry!"

Bucky had leapt back in surprise. He looked down at his left arm as if he'd forgotten it was there, and slowly raised both of his hands, staring at them. The moment of surprise was muted as he wiggled his fingers and let out a relieved little bark of laughter.

Though he didn't get the joke, Steve also laughed, mostly in relief that he hadn't spooked him enough to disappear again. "I didn't mean to... I'm Steve. Do you at least remember me?"

Bucky squinted his eyes, looking at him askew. "No... Maybe? No."

"Maybe?" Steve pushed.

"No."

"Oh."

Again, Bucky slid a little closer. "Maybe... but... if you're Steve... well... I thought..."

"What?"

"I thought you were smaller?"

Steve could have hugged him. "Yes," he chuckled, "I was. I used to be a lot smaller. So you do remember me."

"I don't know. Everything's a jumble," Bucky admitted. "Your eyes. They are familiar." He went to the table against the wall by the window and ran his hand over the sketch Steve had been making of the city skyline. "And I remember the smell of pencil and charcoal. The scratchy sounds. And... lots of coughing and wheezing."

"That was me. My lungs used to be... not so good."

"Sit down," Bucky suddenly ordered, pulling the chair back, eagerly. He waited as Steve did as he was told, and then he leaped up onto the side of the table where he often used to sit, back against the wall, when Steve was drawing. Even the motion he used to jump up was familiar. "Draw something for me."

"Anything?"

"Help me remember."

Steve thought about it for a moment, trying to come up with the perfect subject to jog his memory. It was actually obvious, though not the easiest of things to draw. He settled down, picked out a pencil, and began work on a self portrait. Not of himself as he now was, or at least had been when he froze under the water, but of himself when he was a ninety pound asthmatic with a nose too big for his face. It took a while, but when he finished the sketch, a little rough but having the resemblance he wanted, he gave it to Bucky. He watched the flicker of emotions play across his face as he looked at it for a long time, fingers gripping the edge of the paper too tightly.

"Yes," Bucky said, softly, surprising Steve by shedding tears over it. "I remember Steve." He clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes for a while, and Steve had an irrational sense of being an intruder on a private moment somehow. "I think I lost him."

"Nope. That's me," Steve sighed, "and I'm right here. I found you."

Before Bucky could react to that, the radio suddenly came to life, a sonic boom of static and ringing sound barking out, foreign voices barking amongst it. Bucky pressed his hands against his ears and wailed a sound that was almost inhuman in its terror.

By the time Steve had got hold of it and started moving the dials, trying to turn it down or even off, Bucky had disappeared again. The portrait floated gently onto the table where he had been sitting.

The radio stopped abruptly, leaving a heavy silence that hurt Steve's ears even more. As safe as he felt in the apartment, there was a gnawing feeling that he couldn't escape when he was there all alone, as if he was occupying a space that he wasn't supposed to be in.

But all he could do was occupy himself and hope that Bucky would come back soon.

As for where Bucky was disappearing to, he was almost afraid to find out.


	5. Chapter 5

"I go to hell," was what Bucky told him when Steve finally asked where he went whenever he disappeared, making him wish he hadn't. "If this is heaven, like you say, then I guess I got one foot in both doors."

It took a lot of time spent together for Bucky to start returning to the way Steve remembered him being. Steve drew dozens of pictures and had taken to pinning them up on the wall in rows so Bucky could keep being reminded of who he was. With a little concentration, he'd made it so that none of them ever disappeared, and the drawer under the table was actually replenishing his suplies. In fact, he could sometimes will small things to appear in there with some concentration, like the set of playing cards he'd taken from a memory of time spent at home with his Ma, which proved pretty useful.

"I don't get what you mean." Steve asked, carefully studying his hand of cards instead of Bucky's face, afraid of what he might see there.

"Must be how it works in the afterlife. For all the time I tried to be good, you're my reward. And for all the bad things I did, and all the things that are wrong with me, I get..." Bucky swallowed hard and ducked his head. "This place ain't perfect though."

"It's not?"

"Too cold outside. I hate the cold."

They didn't go out too often for that reason. It was possible to walk about the empty frozen streets of Brooklyn but neither of them could stand it for too long. The only reason Steve ever suggested it was because it gave rise to the excuse to lie together in the double bed afterwards, curled up like they did in the old days, for warmth - despite knowing that it would come anyway regardless. It wasn't anything like it had been when Steve used to dream about Bucky of course; this was the real Bucky, not the more obliging version he'd conjured, he was sure of that. Besides, being dead seemed to have removed any sort of issues of arousal and desire for Steve, like his body was just permanently frozen. So wrapping himself in Bucky was just pure comfort. If anything, Steve thought he loved that even more, now that it felt more real and he could trust what he was feeling without that kind of distraction.

"I get that," Steve said, trying to keep the conversation light, not really succeeding. "So what's the other place like?" He couldn't say the word 'hell'. The thought of Bucky Barnes, the best most caring man he had ever known, going to such a place brought him up in hot flush of rage.

Bucky dropped his cards and went to stand by the window, looking out, his face grim and white. "All my worst nightmares."

Steve went and stood behind him and hesitantly squeezed his shoulder. "Sorry for asking," he whispered, and laid a gentle kiss at the apex between his neck and his shoulder, where the loose top had left bare skin.

Before he even realised his mistake, Bucky's hand came to rest over his and his friend was leaning back into him, like he didn't mind the kiss one bit. "This place is keeping me sane. Remembering helps. Makes me able to fight them." He sighed, deeply.

"Fight who?"

A mean bark of a laugh escaped Bucky's lips and he grimaced in a way which made Steve not want an answer. This was just as well, as no answer was given.

He decided not to ask again. Even when Bucky's absences started to feel extremely long and his brief appearances were more like seeing a ghost, the way his eyes stared off into the distance as he went straight to the bed and wrapped himself up in the covers without saying a word, only to disappear again without warning. Steve had this awful feeling that somehow Bucky was slipping away from him; that one day he wouldn't be coming back, but he didn't know what to do.

Outside, the calm eternal winter was unmoving, the daylight endless and the blue sky never changing. Inside, it was always warm but also always the same. The only thing Steve lived for was the moments when he had Bucky with him. The thought of him not returning lived at the back of his mind as an everpresent sense of unease.

He was dozing a little on the couch when Bucky suddenly came to him with a frantic look in his eyes. Without any warning, Bucky had fallen onto him and was clinging on for dear life, shivering violently in his arms.

"What's...?"

It took a moment for Steve to realise that he was shaking in fear. He pulled him closer and held on as tightly as he could, not sure why but eager to help.

"This might be the last chance I ever get," Bucky whispered into his neck, finally. "I regret a lot of things, Steve, but not you. The only part of me that was ever any good was you." All of sudden, they were kissing, Steve breathless with surprise at first but quick to reciprocate, a new corner of his heaven opening up to him and sending waves of happiness shooting through his chest.

"Buck..."

"Don't." Bucky was acting like he was taking something forbidden, like he expected Steve to kick him away any second, eyes pleading for just a few more seconds to take something that he seemed desperate for.

"It's alright. I um... always wanted to try this out." He chuckled and nibbled at the corner of Bucky's mouth. Steve momentarily wondered if this was still just a dream and Bucky wasn't really with him, but quickly pulled himself away from that line of thought; this was real, this was Bucky, nothing else made sense. This was really happening and he couldn't have been happier about it.

Yet despite his eager coaxing there was still an unwarranted amount of hesitancy in Bucky's expression, like he wasn't quite sure if he could believe his own ears. His eyes grew slowly darker. "Don't make fun of me."

"I'm not, I'm not. I've had a... that is to say, I've wanted to... well... I have kind of loved you ever since I could remember. How could I not?" He ran his fingers through Bucky's hair, looking deeply into his eyes, trying to will that love that he felt into him to dispel all doubt and being as bold as he could, despite the way his heart was hammering. "Hell, I couldn't live without you. Don't that tell you something?" Steve continued, trying to convince him. "I jumped off a plane into enemy territory to find you before. I found you in the afterlife, if that's what this is. You have to believe me when I tell you, I don't do that for any old pal of mine."

Bucky was still trembling but he didn't look quite so wild now. He smiled sadly and kissed Steve again, letting it all go. It was all so easy too, as if they'd kissed a thousand times before. But before it got too far, Bucky stopped and laid his head back down on Steve's collarbone, gasping little huffs into his skin.

"What's wrong? Come on Buck, tell me."

"I can't... I can't fight them anymore," he muttered and said something that Steve didn't quite hear, but which sounded like it might have been in another language anyway. "They're gonna...."

"Gonna what? Bucky, gonna what?"

"Just... promise me, if I make it back, remind me again. I don't want to forget," Bucky pleaded. "Promise me, Steve."

"Of course. But I..."

Bucky cut him off with another kiss, of the sort that seemed to cause a frission of souls touching, deep and hard and filled with promise.

The radio was starting to hiss in the corner, empty frequencies cycling and creating a buzz. Bucky's grip on him was growing more and more urgent, like he knew he was going to be ripped away at any second.

And he was right. Bucky faded away mid-kiss, leaving Steve gasping for air and feeling a wave of cold over his skin that shouldn't have existed in the warmth of the apartment. He shivered and sat up, looking around, hoping against hope for Bucky to still be there somewhere.

The radio erupted in howling screams that pierced his ears and he leapt over the side of the couch to smash it into silence. It left him rattled and afraid, all the sudden joy he'd been feeling lost in an instant. 

The waiting and wondering became a torture in of itself. The unsettling way time swayed about without any sense of night or day, second or hour, grew to torment Steve. He sat for what felt like long periods of time, running through events in his life to make sure he didn't forget them; the day he met Bucky, their adventures as kids, time spent with his Ma and Pa, Peggy Carter walking into a London bar in a red dress and treating him like the only guy in the room, those magic winter nights spent with Bucky curled around him, hardly daring to breathe.

Though there was no way to tell just how much time was passing, he felt like it was a lot. It had actually started snowing a little outside, not that it ever settled. Once or twice, while looking out of the window Steve was convinced he'd seen Bucky outside, wandering in the snow, but he never found him when he actually ran out into the cold to search. There were never any footprints.

One day he started from dozing on the couch, drifting in his memories, and he immediately knew that something was different. The light coming through the window was darker, and when Steve went to look out, he saw that the sky was finally taking on the darker tone of evening twilight.

A sudden thunderstorm erupted, so strong the lightning bolts hitting the building jarred his bones. He was shocked to see electricity crawling around the walls of the apartment, like they were tendrils of some enormous monster that was trying to crush the whole place. A whirling gale ripped all of his pictures from the wall and turned all the furniture over. Steve flipped the couch and got underneath it to shelter from the sudden storm.

Luckily, it only last a few minutes. Steve was left kneeling in the wreckage, not sure what to do. He wished he understood the mechanics of what this place he'd landed in actually was; it had the hallmarks of a dream and he'd honestly believed it was his own personal heaven at first, but too little about it made sense. Bucky was gone and now this. It was starting to feel like maybe he had gone past the Pearly Gates after all and had nosedived in another direction entirely.

There was too much to pick up and put back together, so Steve shook his head and decided to figure it out later. He headed to the bedroom and made to go for the bed, intending to wrap himself up and pretend he could smell Bucky there, even though he couldn't.

The sound of the closet door snapping shut as he entered the room startled him. He held his breath and approached it, quietly, listening intently. As he turned his ear to the door, he heard the unmistakable sound of pitiful sobs coming from inside.

"Hello?" he asked, and immediately the crying sounded like it was being muffled. "I'm going to open the door. Alright? One... two... three..."

He threw it open and caught hold of the lightening fast little creature that jumped out through the clothes, trying to evade him. It thrashed and wailed and clawed at him and it took a moment for Steve to realise he was holding a child. A little boy.

It took some long seconds of holding him tightly so he wouldn't be able to move to calm the child down enough for him to stop yelling out, and only then was Steve able to get a look at him, in the chipped mirror above the sink in the corner where they used to shave and brush their teeth. He was shocked, and yet somehow not shocked, to recognise him.

"Hey Bucky," he said, trying to be non-threatening, trying to sound soothing. "Hardly recognised you, pal." He was exactly how Steve remembered him from the very first day they met; a dapper little kid in a cap and with a pair of shiny leather shoes, because his Pa had got a job on the E-J Shoe Company production line.

He'd jumped into a fight Steve was having with a couple of neighbourhood bullies, a good few years older than them both, who'd been flipping some poor girl's skirt as she tried to walk home from school. They'd given Steve a pretty good fat lip and Bucky got a nice shiner for his trouble, but they ran away laughing, Bucky showing Steve a hiding place around the back of one of the shops.

Steve had come over all shy right off and had said something about Bucky's amazing shiny shoes, which made him kind of embarrased about his muddy old pair with all the holes in the heels. He didn't have anything better to wear and he honestly hadn't seen such a fine pair of shoes on any kid before, not even in Church. Bucky had laughed, slapped him on the back, and then insisted they swap, recounting some story he'd heard called the Prince and the Pauper which involved swapping roles too. He'd promised that he wouldn't miss his shoes and wouldn't let Steve go without putting them on, grinning at the amazement on Steve's face when he saw them on his own feet.

A few days later, Bucky popped up again wearing a whole new pair, laughing easily and mussing Steve's hair like he'd played the best prank in the world. He said he'd told his Pa bullies took his first ones and said that their matching shoes made them best friends. It was the rules. Though Steve's Ma had worried about owing money they didn't have for the shoes at first, Steve had introduced her to Bucky and Lord if that kid didn't have the gift of the gab. He'd charmed Steve's Ma through and through like no one else ever had. At some point soon after, his Ma made friends with Bucky's Ma, and they'd never had to be apart from then on, which was for the best because, pretty soon, Steve had never wanted to live another day without Bucky Barnes in his life.

This squirming kid in his arms was a seven year old, all scraped knees and home cut hair sticking out under the cap, plus those amazing shiny shoes that didn't even really belong on his scrawny frame. "I can handle this," Steve told himself, seeing his reflection panicking a little, "I can handle this."

Then Bucky elbowed him in the ribs and he realised he actually couldn't handle it. The kid scrabbled to get away and then slid himself under the bed, hiding from him, his breath still audible as it was coming in deep huffs.

"Oh man," Steve sighed, and slid down to sit on the floor, staying far back from the bed but close enough for Bucky to be able to hear him and know where he was in the room. "Bucky, it's alright, it's just me. It's just Steve. You remember me? We used to have the same shoes cause we're best friends."

He tried talking about a few things from that time period, though his memory wasn't great from that age. Things like the stew Bucky's Ma used to make for Steve when he was sick, that made him want to pretend sometimes because it was so tasty and all the hours they spent pretending to be cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians, or doctor and patient when Steve's lungs were rattling and he wasn't allowed out. But pretty soon, all was silent and Steve could tell that Bucky had disappeared.

This time, it wasn't for long. The child version of Bucky started appearing at fairly regular intervals, at first scrabbling into the closet to hide, then slowly finding his way around the apartment. Steve found that letting the kid go at his own pace worked better than trying to talk to him or confront him. He was just as stubborn and plucky as he remembered him being at that age, and twice as curious.

One such appearance lasted for a particularly long time, during which Bucky got bold enough to look at all the pictures Steve had been drawing and pinning up on the wall, and starting pointing at them and trying to name things in them, or places he knew. Steve didn't press him but he made it clear that he was happy that he was starting to remember things. Steve made a conscious effort to draw some things Bucky might remember from their childhood and was rewarded with the slow dawning of a gentle trust.

Bucky even started to play finally, most often pretending to be a robot with a mighty hand that could crush anything he wanted - "my big big arm!" - which Steve pretended to fall victim to over and over. They played some of the childish games he remembered loving, like cowboys and indians too, with Bucky throwing his pencils about and pretending they were knives or tomahawks. He retaught some card games to Bucky too to pass the time and he also pulled the couch cushions to the floor and constructed a tent over them using bedsheets.

Mostly things were okay. He missed adult Bucky fiercely but pushed it down, not quite understanding the odd presence of this child incarnation of his friend, but feeling that somehow that it was important he indulge him. He felt good, useful even, spending time with little Bucky.

But sometimes Steve would come in from taking a rest in the bedroom or from going on a walk outside and find Bucky cowering in the tent, cheeks streaked with silently shed tears, a childish drawing left on the table of stick figures meeting messy, horrible, bloody ends, Steve's red pencil put to hard work in sharp scribbles everywhere. He drew pictures of what Steve thought must be himself - he always had one arm always much larger than the other in his pictures - surrounded by huge black figures with scary angry faces. One drawing in particular which broke his heart a little was divided in two by a jagged line, a stick figure with a mess of yellow hair and a big smile on one side, what looked to be Bucky on the other in a scrawl of red, apparently trying to reach for the other figure but being stopped by the line and by big monster hands coming out of nowhere to pull him back. Steve wanted to ask about them but he didn't want to push him when he was at his most fragile. 

Then the lightning storm suddenly returned, just as fiercesome as it been the first time, and it wrecked the apartment again. Bucky wasn't around when it happened but he appeared right after it, back where they started, with him hiding in the closet and looking at Steve with obvious fear. All recognition was gone again and Steve had to start again with the whole process.

It happened again and again. Steve came to recognise a pattern; it tended to happen after Bucky had been there for quite a long time, long enough to start remembering again, always was followed by a sudden absence and then another immense storm which delivered him back, a shell once more.

The sky outside was a lot darker than it had been at the start of his time there and it was snowing constantly; not yet a blizzard, but definitely getting heavier. Brooklyn was getting blurry, losing pieces of itself. While walking around outside one day, Steve noticed a huge green cloud in the distance, storming of its own accord in a small area just beyond the horizon. Though Steve was curious about it, he couldn't seem to get any closer when he tried to investigate. It was always far away, partially hidden from him by the cold and the snow. Just another one of the maddening mysteries of this place he was coming to realise was more a prison than a reward.

Just when he thought things couldn't get more frustrating, he started to get an uneasy sense that he was being watched somehow. Whenever he was by the window, he could feel eyes, and sometimes he thought he glimpsed a figure through the snowfall. Steve thought he was going mad until one day, little Bucky climbed up onto the windowsill to look outside and a single bullet smashed through the glass and nicked his arm, enough to spin him around and throw him to the floor.

Steve had ran outside and definitely saw the figure moving this time. The Sniper, as he immediately thought of him, was a dark smudge amongst the white, but while Steve made chase, he'd evaded him quite easily. A few bullets had been thrown his way but Steve discovered that they went straight through him, harmlessly. He was immune.

It was no longer safe for Bucky to go near the window so Steve covered the whole thing up with the bedsheet that had been a tent, but the cold was creeping inside through the broken glass, spreading out and freezing everything near it, white tendrils of frost crawling inside. Though he wasn't too badly hurt by the bullet, Bucky instinctively stayed far away from the window after that. He asked Steve over and over who was outside but Steve couldn't answer.

In time, another storm took hold and wiped his memories again. Steve went through the motions to bring back his memories, as he always did, and did everything he could to restore him to the Bucky he knew. But the day he pulled the sheet down and looked out of the window with a child's curiosity when Steve wasn't looking was probably inevitable. As was the single gunshot which hit him square in the forehead and knocked him down, wide eyed and staring at the ceiling while Steve cradled the little body, panicking, not knowing what to do. There was no blood but the damage seemed to be done all the same. He looked like he was gone.

Outside, the Sniper continued to roam under a darkening sky, amidst the frenzied snow. The world outside the apartment no longer resembled anything but a white wilderness that had swallowed the city whole, with that mysterious green cloud still roaming the horizon. Steve went after the Sniper again, angry and determined to get to the bottom of what he was doing there, why he'd been so determined to hurt Bucky, and he almost caught up with the dark figure this time. He got close enough to see flashes of a mask and a sniper rifle and was about to grab him..

But before he could do it, Steve suddenly found himself coming over faint. Everything span around, bright flashes of light bouncing off his eyeballs and dazing him. Then there was pain, white hot needles tormenting his skin and in his mind he was screaming. It was overwhelming and it wouldn't stop.

He span and span and...

Woke up.


	6. Chapter 6

Steve had long since come to the conclusion that what he'd experienced during those 70 years of sleep under the ice was nothing more than another lucid dream. He'd made his peace with that notion, hard though it was, and he'd accepted that all the different ways his mind had recreated Bucky for him were all just false manifestations. That was why it came as particularly suprising to him when, after over a year with no dreams whatsoever, he fell back into that cold place he'd started to forget. 

There wasn't much left there. The blizzard had obliterated almost everything, but that green storm cloud was still on the horizon and it looked even bigger than Steve remembered, closer than before. The sky was now dark and foreboding, tinged with red at the edges, angry and jagged. The building containing their apartment remained but it was standing weatherbeaten and alone now, half sunk, the snow so high that what had been the third floor was now the first.

Steve stumbled over to it, the snow burning his eyes and face and the wind a whip against his back, seeing no other place to go for refuge. There was no way in except through the window into the living room and Steve saw that it had already been smashed through. He hauled himself inside with some effort and landed in a room that was nearly unrecognisable to him.

The table was still there, where it had been before, but the couch was a pile of torn up fabric, wood and springs. Almost all of his drawings were ripped down, most shredded, the tiny paper pieces slowly floating about the place like ashes caught out of time. But that wasn't all; the wallpaper too was torn at in shreds, like some wild animal had broken in and clawed everything away, leaving jagged scratches. There were also lots of holes like something had punched into the wall and fractured it in places. Even the old carpet was wrecked, pulled up and torn to shreds in huge jagged patches.

Cold had seeped inside through a broken front door, hollowing everything out, making it feel unfamilar and vague. Everything looked peeling, rusted, decaying, dark. Except the radio, he noticed. That had been put back together, in a slighly haphazard way, but well enough for it to be on and making a low buzzing sound with the vaguest hint of voices moaning and crying beneath it. Steve shivered and turned it off.

The bedroom door was off its hinges he noticed next, practically broken in half, but the room it led to was not what was there before. He could see that immediately. Steve moved closer, curious.

It was somewhere he didn't recognise, sitting out of place. At first he thought it was Zola's laboratory, the room that had been added there in the earliest days of his visits. It looked similar, with a mess of machinery and unknown medical devices dotted about, but it wasn't quite the same. Everything looked newer, more honed. Instead of a gurney was a large chair, like a barber's chair but much bigger and covered in wiring, back turned to the door, tinged green in the dim lighting. It had been spared the decay of the living room but it was still a mess.

Steve stepped in to look around, trying to find something familiar, some basis for it. He thought about the many medical rooms he'd been in since waking up from the ice but none of them resembled it.

As he moved around, he started and his breath caught as he realised, there was someone sitting in the chair. Or rather, there was a small unmoving body covered in a sheet, little feet sticking out at the bottom, shiny leather shoes on them. It could have been a doll, except that it wasn't.

Steve immediately covered his mouth, feeling sick. He backed out of the room, stumbling over the threshold, needing to get away. But the moment he got near the window, he heard the zipping sound of a bullet and the loud punch it made as it hit the wall behind him.

The Sniper.

It was the same old nightmare coming from the same strange place in his mind and Steve woke up in a cold sweat. 

He didn't want to ever fall back into that hell again; starting staying awake to avoid it. For the most part it worked, but every now and then, he would find himself being suffocated in the blizzard, fruitlessly chasing and being chased by the ghost who haunted it. Steve tried to stay away from the apartment, as long as he could stand to at least. The cold was bad but, with the ache of lonliness that came with his new life, the constant feeling of a void in his heart that couldn't be filled, the thought of that little body under the sheet stuck was too much of a grim reminder of what was lost to him.

The passage of time was healing, to some degree at least. Steve threw himself into the work that had been set for him over the next few years, serving the United States as best he could, as an Avenger and as what amounted to a hired gun within SHIELD under the leadership of Nick Fury. He visited an elderly Peggy Carter and looked at all her photos of the life she lived; the life he might have lived too, had Bucky never fallen and taken some essential part of Steve down with him. He started to make new friends here and there - Howard Stark's kid Tony, Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson, Bruce Banner and a few others - took their suggestions about the things to catch up on from his missing 70 years, tried to make a life for himself. Engaging with the real world as much as he could bear helped keep that nightmare at bay and let him rest in the empty darkness instead, which suited Steve just fine.

It had never been his choice to survive that plunge into the ice, when Bucky hadn't survived his, but there wasn't much he could do now except go on alone. Even in his dreams, Bucky was dead.

It occured one day that Sam Wilson asked him a question no one had asked him for decades; "What makes you happy?" and he had been absolutely stumped. Sure, he could smile, joke around, laugh a little when he had to, but there was no real happiness in the core of him anymore. Paradoxically, the real world was a great deal more numbing than the dream world he had been stuck inside before. At least then, he'd still thought he had Bucky with him in some form or another.

If he thought about it, Steve Rogers knew what made him happy without a second thought. The story of the man who had loved his best friend more than any dame was written on the wall of the Smithsonian for anyone who looked hard enought to see. But nobody in the new century knew Steve Rogers, not even the rapidly deteriorating shell of Peggy Carter. Captain America was all that was left now and the Cap had no answer to give to Sam except, "I don't know."

But then, in a single moment, everything he thought he knew crumbled in the most unexpected way possible.

_"Who the hell is Bucky?"_

Five words that exploded to a pinpoint of shock behind his eyes. One moment, he'd been fighting the HYDRA assassin who had murdered Nick Fury, doing the right thing to protect his friends and the innocent bystanders who were at risk, just like he always did. The next he was frozen to the spot, staring at a man he would happily die for, who looked at him from behind the barrel of a gun and nearly shot him down on the street.

When the HYDRA pretenders within SHIELD came and bundled him into the back of a van, Steve didn't say a word in protest; couldn't say anything. He could only hear the sound of his own heavy breathing rushing in his ears. 

It all suddenly unwound in his mind, like Bucky really had unloaded a bullet into his head.

"Zola. Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him."

He remembered a knife, thrown into a tree, a second knife thrown after it and placed at precisely the same spot. _"Whaddaya make of that, Steve?"_ Bucky asked in his mind. _"I had the worst aim in the company when I landed in England, you know."_ He remembered dozens of times Bucky had saved his life, always seeing everything, always hitting his mark; the sword to his shield.

"Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall..."

He remembered a HYDRA base collapsing on top of them, barely escaping, thinking Bucky was dead. Except he pulled himself out somehow. _"Born lucky, I guess,"_ Bucky had told him, with that wry yet pained chuckle he only developed during the war.

"They must have found him and..."

_"I was never quite sure if I really woke up. Something's been off ever since. I'm... rearranged."_ In his dreams, he'd told Steve. Over and over again, Bucky had told him.

It had already started, whatever they did to Bucky. Only Steve hadn't wanted to think about it, the realities of what Bucky had gone through whilst captured in '43. He'd thought his dreams were just his mind extrapolating...

_"There was a moment on that table, when they stuck the light rays on me that last time, I could feel my blood boiling and my eyes burning..."_

... based on what had happened to him when he'd received the serum. But no, there was only one explanation. It had simply never occured to him before. The serum was designed to make men superhuman, taking them to the very peak of evolution. And over and over again, Bucky had told him, both in reality and in his dreams... and actually so had the Red Skull. They'd all been there together and...

The arm. _"my big big arm!"_ There was no way he could have known about Bucky's arm, the _robot_ arm as the child version of him had explained it to him. Not unless...

The serum hadn't just sharpen his body, it had sharpened his mind too. Steve knew that much for certain; every time he threw his shield, it was like seeing numbers flying around in the air, calculating the tragectory to the most exact degree possible to ensure it would be returned to him. That magic formula had given him a superior visual memory too and a whole host of other new skills. That meant it was entirely possible that it had given him a skill he hadn't even known.

A... psychic connection?

And it was suddenly obvious that those experiments on the men of the 107th must have been to create HYDRA's answer to Captain America, given who was administering them... which meant that Bucky had to have been given some form of the serum too, probably based on notes reconstructed by Dr Zola after Dr Erskine escaped to America. There was no way he could have survived that fall otherwise; no way he could have lived long enough for HYDRA to find him and...

If he had been repeatedly sucked into the insane mind of Johann Schmidt through a psychic link, that meant that the apartment and the time spent together there could also have been real. It made a horrfying sort of sense. All of it. 

All those times Bucky had disappeared on him and gone to a place where all his nightmares lived. He'd been waking up. All that time. 70 years in a nightmare.

Steve felt dizzy, pieces falling into place in ways that hurt him more and more.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."

And now Bucky didn't even know who he was. Whatever HYDRA had done to his best friend, his _soul_ , Steve had borne witness to the effects and hadn't even known it. It had to be mind control, something done over a long period of time... The lightning... the way Bucky was reduced to a child over and over, the smallest kernal of who he had been, all memories gone until Steve had reminded him and retaught him, over and over again... _they_ were doing it to him. 

_"Just... promise me, if I make it back, remind me again. I don't want to forget."_ He could hear Bucky pleading in his mind, again, as he had that last time he saw him before the first storm. _"Promise me, Steve."_

What if it had all been real, right from the start? Those fraught nights spent running through the dark base where the Red Skull roamed, conjuring HYDRA minions to chase him, watching his ideal world where all was fire and death; the safe haven of the apartment and time he'd spent there; loving Bucky in ways he'd been afraid to in reality, thinking it all just nothing more than mere wish fulfilment, what if that had really been Bucky? What if, all that time he'd yearned for him, Bucky had yearned too?

The thought of it made him absolutely heartsick.

But then he recalled the state of the apartment now and that was worse. He'd left Bucky there all alone. No, maybe not Bucky, the _Sniper_... the _Winter Soldier_. Whatever was left of his friend, caught in an endless winter, that last refuge he'd had abandoned to the cold and decaying without him there.

There wasn't a lot of time for Steve to dwell, things were moving fast now that Nick Fury had revealed himself to be alive and in hiding and with Project Insight due to be launched. But he had to dispel that final question in his mind. He simply had to know for sure.

So he texted Bruce Banner and asked him for a favour.

Steve found a vaguely quiet corner and took a nap while Natasha was being treated for her injuries, actively willing himself into the cold as he went under. The moment he found himself there, he started running, fighting the snow and the wind to get to his destination with everything he had. Now that his body wasn't frozen under ice, all the sensations he'd been missing before had returned and he could feel the weight in his chest from the cold and the way it made all his nerve endings twang.

The nearer he came to the green storm cloud that had been lingering on the horizon for so long the less the snow and cold bothered him. Eventually, he made it, launching himself inside as fast as possible, the green fog tasting somehow bitter and acrid.

At the core was a dome of clear space where the swirling green clouds and the storm were being kept at bay. A familiar figure was sitting at the centre of it, looking serene with his eyes closed as if he was meditating.

"Bruce!" Steve yelled, excitedly.

Bruce's eyes snapped open the moment Steve landed in his cleared space. "Wh... Steve? What?" he gasped.

"It's real. I knew it. It's real."

"How did... this is my..." Bruce continued to splutter, looking absolutely shocked.

"You come here when you sleep, don't you?" Steve asked, earnestly.

"I... yes. It helps me control what's inside me... Being here is like meditating." Bruce shook his head, still looking bewildered. "But you've never appeared here before... No one has."

"Listen to me Bruce, we don't have much time. I think it's the serum. It does things we didn't realise. We can connect, in our minds, share dreams."

Bruce stared at him, considering his words, looking more curious than outraged. "Wow, " he said finally. "Really? If that's true..."

That was as long as they got, but it was enough.

The moment Steve was woken up by Agent Hill for the meeting with Nick Fury, he slipped out and called Bruce.

It took just about long enough for him to pick up the phone to give time for Steve's pulse rate to soar a little. "You were asleep," he said the moment the call was answered.

"I took a nap, like you asked."

"Right. Me too. I saw the green clouds and the storm around you, the way you have a space at the centre where you meditate. I'm right aren't I? That was real?"

There was a pause, and then Bruce sighed. "I saw you there. Steve, how the hell...?"

"What did I say in the dream?"

"That it was the serum. That we can connect in our minds."

Steve expelled all his breath in one go and closed his eyes, caught between gratitute and sorrow at the confirmation of what he suspected. "I've gotta go, but thank you Bruce. I'll um, I'll explain everything soon as I can."

He sat down on the nearest surface he could and leaned over, head in his hands, on the verge of no longer being able to breathe.

Bruce Banner was the only other person he knew to have received a version of that serum. That proved that he was right. It had all been real all along.

"Buck, I'm so sorry," he moaned and stained his sleeve with tears.

Then he forced the pain down and steeled himself for what was to come. Steve had promises to fulfil and if he knew one thing it was this: if he couldn't save Bucky, he would die before killing him.  
  
Even if his friend didn't remember him, even if he looked at Steve and saw nothing but an obstacle to his mission, at least the Winter Soldier would know that someone had chosen death over hurting him; that not everyone was cold to the core, like all those HYDRA scientists and handlers who had stolen his humanity and made him into a weapon, muzzled and helpless.

He would hopefully at least know, even if only for a brief moment, that he'd been loved by someone once.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve was always waking up in too-soft beds, no matter how many times he sank into the water and tried to let it all go. It was his curse it seemed.

Except, no, there was a reason this time. A good one.

He remembered everything being loud, breaking apart, and that shocked look in Bucky's eyes at the end when the helecarrier broke up. Pain in his chest, but not from a bullet; the heartbreak of having to hurt Bucky to complete his mission and save lives. Falling, hitting water, and a hand coming toward him...

It wasn't too late. Even if Bucky had shot him three times, stuck a knife in his shoulder and nearly crushed his face, he'd stopped himself in the end. He'd remembered something, Steve knew it. He wasn't completely lost. When Steve fell, Bucky jumped after him and saved him, the way Steve never had.

He had a lot of time to think during his recovery. The chemically induced sleep provided to him to help him heal was a void and he couldn't find his way back to the apartment the way he could when he concentrated while falling asleep. It wasn't the same. So he tried to stay awake as much as possible, just in case... well it was unlikely that Bucky would come to see him in the hospital, but that faint wisp of hope that had eluded him since he was woken up from the ice was lighting a fire inside him at last. He didn't just feel alive, he felt _alive_.

It all came down to one fundamental point, so far as he could see. Bucky was still the better man between them, no matter how much he always used to shuck off that praise and claim to be a sinner, and definitely in spite of what had been done to him. Steve hadn't grown up wanting to be Captain America, he'd wanted to be Bucky Barnes, or at least to be worthy of him. Steve had no illusions that the Winter Soldier was a thing to be shed lightly; Dr Erskine had told him the serum enhanced the innate nature of a man, making Johann Schmitt insane, apparently unleashing Bruce Banner's rage, giving Steve's innate strength an outlet at last, and the cold murderous precision of HYDRA's assassin was born out of the fierce protectiveness that had been present in Bucky ever since he'd known him. What those monsters had taken and moulded for their own purposes, it had existed before them, because Bucky had always protected Steve no matter what it cost him to do so. That darkness he'd embraced was made from a place of love, it was completely unselfish, and to Steve that made him the better man and more worthy of saving than anyone.

Natasha located some files for him, said they were a favour called in from Kiev, but Steve had his doubts. She had let slip before that she'd tried to find him before herself a long time ago, and Steve thought the files were probably related to that forgotten search. He didn't question it. It seemed like a conversation for another day.

"You're going after him." Sam had said, like Jiminy Cricket sitting on his shoulder, reading his mind. Such a good friend, always.

"You don't have to come with me."

"I know. When do we start?"

Steve almost laughed at that."It's more complicated than you know."

"Try me."

It was time. He honestly trusted Sam and if Steve had learned anything from the SHIELD/HYDRA fiasco, it was that trust was a precious thing indeed.

So they went back to Sam's place, a laptop on one side of his dining room table with Google Translate on standby, the file on the other with a pen and paper, plus a lot of coffee on standby. If Steve was going to reach out to Bucky in his mind, he needed to know what he was dealing with first and foremost. He had to know the ugly truth of what had happened to him.

He told Sam everything about the lucid dreams (well, most of it, he left out certain aspects of their relationship; that was nobody's business but theirs). As they worked through the file, bit by bit, translating and taking notes, Steve tried to match the dates roughly to occurances he'd dreamed about; the Russian voices he'd heard on the radio a long time ago, right at the start, the stick figure drawings he remembered little Bucky leaving for him which matched up with the assassinations listed with an eerie precision, the photo and schematics of that ominous chair he'd seen more recently. Steve tried to be dispassionate about it, but there were a few photos attached with paperclips inside that left his hands shaking as he held them. He listened to Sam telling stories about his flight days to distract him with just a touch more hysteria in his tone of voice than was normal and worked on his breathing. Seeing Bucky in a cage, another of him strapped to a medical table, one of him chained up for transport to a training facility, and a photo of him with that blank look in his eyes that accompanied the report of the first successful mind wipe with the original version of that electrical chair, it hurt him inside, left him gasping for air like he was drowning. But no matter what Sam suggested, Steve pressed on, determined to make it to the end.

Turned out, Dr Zola had been working with factions within the Russian Science Division of HYDRA for almost as long as he'd been part of the German Science Section under the insane eye of Johann Schmidt. The divisons had had a surprisingly cordial relationship, given the more overt animosity between their respective Governments. HYDRA was a surprisingly unified force under Schmidt. Apparently Dr Zola had transmitted the coordinates where Bucky fell to the Russian division the moment he saw it happen, instructing that the Asset - the first codename apparently used for their super soldier - be retrieved, right before Gabe Jones had burst in and got the train stopped.

Zola had always been waiting for the chance to recapture his most successful experiment. In fact, it was mentioned that they'd drawn up plans to snatch him, before that fateful fall had delivered him into their hands at last.

Bucky had been put on ice for a few years while Zola had wormed his way into SHIELD, _a beautiful parasite_ , all the while still sending their secrets to Russia and collaborating with other scientists and technicians in preparation for the next phase of what he called, 'the procedure'. Once trusted enough to be let loose, he headed out to oversee the installation of the vibranium arm that had been crafted over the course of two years by the best technicians they had (and by an unnamed inventor who'd been abduted from SHIELD, according to a handwritten additional note on one report).

When the end of the Cold War came and the Berlin Wall fell, the downsizing effect led to the Russian Science Division selling its Asset on, like a lot of their moveable weaponry infrastructure. The German division wanted him but missed out in favour of the newer and rapidly expanding American division. Bucky had come home in the early 1990s, after nearly half a century of unwilling service, but it was not to the hero's welcome he deserved. From what Steve could tell, HYDRA under Alexander Pierce had been just as cruel to him. In some ways, it was worse, because they had to have known who he really was, an American hero, right out of the stories their mothers told them at bedtime, and yet they used him too without a second thought. With the final pages of the file mostly in English, Steve could see that, half the time, he had been referred to more as an It than a He, which told him everything he needed to know.

When they were finally done, both he and Sam were exhausted. They stuck on a movie, some cop thriller that just happened to be on TV, but they both spent the whole time staring through the screen.

As the end credits rolled, Sam turned to Steve with a seriousness he rarely showed and told him, "I gotta say this, Steve. I've seen a lot of shit in my time. All the damage service does. Everyone in my VA group has mental damage that will take years to overcome. This isn't even that. This guy was a prisoner of war when my grandpa was earning dimes shining shoes."

"You don't think he can come back from it, do you?"

"If the tables were turned, you think you could? You think anyone could? Man, all that stuff we just read? It's beyond what the human mind can endure."

Steve nodded. He knew what Sam was trying to say to him, took no offence at it, but there was something important he needed to tell him; the thing that was going to make it possible, against all the odds. "Thing is, he wasn't alone. I was there, every time he slept or got frozen. He had a refuge. I wouldn't ever let him forget. I have to believe it made a difference. Bucky's still in there somewhere."

"Sure." Sam understood, Steve could just tell. He'd lost people too, a best friend included. "You should get some shut eye, reach out and see what happens. If what you said is true, and he hauled your ass out of that river..."

"He did, I know he did."

"Then he's hopefully gonna be looking for you too, one way or another."

Though it was only what Steve wanted to hear, he took the encouragement. That felt like his cue to head out for the night.

After some consideration about whether to head to a hotel, he decided to head back to his apartment instead. He hadn't been back there since Bucky had shot Nick Fury right through the drywall and he was relieved to see that someone had thought to come in and clear up the mess at least, even if he was still a little creeped out being there alone after what had happened.

But Steve was pretty tired, so sleep came easily. He thought about Bucky, his pleading eyes, his frightened face, and the coldness of the Russian winter that had given him his name, and the apartment that had once been home, willing himself towards all of those things.

He arrived there with a vigour he'd never had before. There was no hesitation, he ran for the apartment and took a leap through the window, calling out for Bucky.

There was no one there.

He leaned back out of the window, trying to see through the blizzard, hoping to see the Sniper but, again, there was nothing, and all he could do was swallow his disappointment.

Steve soon realised that Bucky, wherever he was, couldn't be sleeping much. He went there every night he could and Bucky was nowhere to be found. Every time he waited around, pacing the apartment, avoiding the room at the back, hoping to see Bucky soon, he got more and more concerned and disheartened.

It hit him one day that he should be doing something more active. He knew what this lucid dream, this place of mental refuge, should be and he had let it fall into disrepair. Steve decided to concentrate and start working on repairing it, bit by bit, to make it warm and homely again. He began with the doors and the window, reconstructing them in his mind until the dream gave way and and shifted, allowing the change. He got rid of the frost and snow which had infiltrated it and let the warmth return. Steve stared at the couch, putting it back together a piece at a time until it was the same old mess it used to be, one corner worn away. He stared at the walls, night after night, smoothing away the claw and punch marks, returning the old wallpaper to what it used to be. The carpet was next, another project he worked on in pieces, until it looked the way it should. It slowly started to feel like the old home that meant so much to them both again, the place he imagined the Winter Soldier had wrecked in frustration and despair at finding it empty.

The bedroom was proving to be a problem though. Though he'd closed it off with the door, he couldn't seem to get rid of that room with the chair in it, and the little body under the sheet that sent shivers down his spine. Opening it filled him with dread every time he tried to shift it away. For some reason, it just wouldn't go.

It was while he was concentrating on that issue that, at last, the window smashed and a bullet whizzed through him, hitting the wall behind him. Steve's heart did a backflip and he quickly rushed over and pulled the whole window open. But he didn't go outside or make pursuit. If he'd learned anything from his time with the child version of Bucky, it was that he couldn't be forced to do anything. Space had to be made for him to decide his own path, hard though it was for Steve to remain passive.

He took a seat at the table and took out his old drawing pad and pencils, placing his seat in a position he knew he could be shot at from very easily. Since the bullets were harmless to him here, playing bait was easy. He started to draw, pausing only every so often as the odd bullet came his way, followed by a knife which embedded itself in the wall with a twang.

"Come on, pal," he muttered to himself, "just come inside."

He didn't see Bucky that night but it was still progress. Steve called Sam and told him all about it with a rush of excitement he hadn't felt for a long time. They went running, Steve lapping Sam over and over, trying to wear himself out, Sam going along with it, maybe pleased to see his friend filled with a sense of purpose again.

But there was no quick solution to the problem. Steve simply had to persevere, the window left open as he made himself a target night after night. Eventually, his timing finally came right, and he arrived one night while the Winter Soldier was already inside the apartment. Of course, his arrival spooked him and the first thing the soldier did was throw punches, forcing a confrontation.

"Please Bucky," Steve gasped, and saw him hesitate, the way using his name had on the helecarrier. "It's me. It's Steve. I know you remember me. I know you're scared, but you have to remember. Come on, pal. Let me help."

Slowly, it seemed to get through. Bucky froze and then slumped forward, right into his arms, like he was exhausted. Steve couldn't help himself, he nuzzled against his cheek a little in relief, against the sharp edge of the mask he wore.

It started to pop off on one side and Bucky immediately shoved him away. He landed in the corner, fingers scabbling to make sure the mask remained on. Steve thought he'd blown it, that Bucky was going to run, but he remained there, holding his hands against the mask, looking at him from aside with those lost eyes that carved hollows into Steve's chest.

"I'm sorry, Buck. I didn't mean to... " Steve kept his movements slow and measured as he got up and returned to the table. He started a new drawing, not watching Bucky, trying to show trust. "I'm gonna draw something from when we were kids. You remember that little diner just around the corner from your Ma's place, run by that old lady...?"

That was what he needed to do; tell stories. Steve talked and talked and talked, just recounting everything he could think to recount. At some point, Bucky disappeared, but he didn't feel sad about that for once. Progress was being made. Steve resolved to keep going, not pushing, just giving Bucky the space to return when he wanted to.

It was still pot luck as to when he'd be there, but Bucky at least seemed to have hauled himself out of the cold and stopped reenacting his training with all those phantom bullets and knives. He no longer went for the kill. Instead he crouched down in the same corner, watching and listening, a silent ghost with haunted eyes.

One night, Steve couldn't think of anything to draw, so he decided to take one of his old half naps on the couch. He sensed it was time to vary the routine a little and see how Bucky reacted.

It didn't take long. At last, Bucky came out of his corner, creeping over silently. He stayed on his knees as he leaned over Steve, studying him, Steve watching through his eyelashes and playing dead. After a long moment of contemplation, Bucky reached out and touched his fingers to Steve's eye, but stopped and stared at his own hand, the metal hand. Steve realised belatedly that he had to be remembering what happened on the helecarrier; the way he'd used that fist to nearly pummel Steve's face flat, swelling his eye up in the process. Bucky snatched the foreign hand away and rested his forehead on Steve's chest, breathing heavily.

It took all of Steve's willpower not to reach out, to tell him it was okay, that he was fine, but Steve knew that Bucky needed to have this space to work through it in his own mind. He waited for a few minutes and then slowly let his eyes creak open a little. Bucky was staring up at him from the vantage point of where his head rested, head turned to one side, studying him.

Steve took the risk, smiling softly at him, showing him he was awake. "I missed you," he whispered. "Did you miss me?"

Bucky simply scrunched his eyes closed, the mask still concealing any other response he might have given, so it felt like an answer. Steve let his fingers curl into Bucky's hair a little, hoping to soothe him.

There was a lot more he wanted to say. He wanted to apologise and plead for his forgiveness, to tell him just how much he loved and needed him, but it wasn't the right time. Steve knew he had to wait until Bucky was ready to speak to him, to take off that symbollic muzzle they'd put on him. It had be a real conversation.

Bucky started to approach him more often, sometimes watching him draw from over his shoulder, sometimes watching him pretend to nap from close by. Occasionally, he got spooked and leapt out of the window into the cold again, but Steve couldn't actually figure out what set him off when that happened. It was hard to really know what was going through his mind with that mask and the cascading hair covering his face.

In the real world, he talked to Bruce a few times, since the scientist was fascinated by the implications of the serum having hitherto unrecorded psychic properties. Steve promised to help him with some tests but not until after he'd sorted out the situation with Bucky. For now, they kept to their boundaries in the shared dream space, though the green cloud was definitely a lot closer than it used to be.

In fact the snowfall was also finally starting to abate. The enormous mounds of snow weren't disappearing and the sky still looked permanently ominous, but at least the weather wasn't raging anymore. It was possible to go outside and not feel like his skin was being flayed by ice shards, which gave Steve some hope.

Things were improving but Steve remained concerned about the long absences. In the real world, Bucky had gone off the radar as far as his contacts were concerned. He'd been seen at the Smithsonian once while Steve was still in the hospital but then the trail went cold. He had to hope that, wherever he was, Bucky was taking care of himself and staying out of the way of any rogue HYDRA factions who might be seeking him out.

He was hanging out with Sam one evening when a new idea came to him. Sam had taken it upon himself to teach Steve about a lot of music he'd missed out on, and while he was being educated on the difference between Motown and Stax, his mind wandered to the apartment and, for some reason, the radio. Steve wasn't entirely sure if it would work, but he decided to try putting on some music from the 30s and 40s that he and Bucky used to actually listen to on the old radio and made himself go to sleep with it on in the background.

Bucky was in the apartment, in the corner, when he found his way inside through the window. Steve said a cursory hello and went over to the table to switch the radio on. He leaned into it, listening closely as he scrolled through the frequencies carefully, hoping to find what he was looking for.

He noticed that Bucky had moved in behind him, sliding around silently as always. His friend leaned over him, one hand braced on the edge of the table, watching intently. Eventually, Steve found the music, coming through in a slightly fuzzy sway but audible enough to make him smile. He turned it up as loud as he could.  
  
_Never thought that you would be_  
_Standing here so close to me._  
_There's so much I feel that I should say_  
_But words can wait until some other day._

Steve only realised belatedly that this was the same record playset that Nick Fury had put on when he'd been waiting for Steve to get home, right before Bucky had shot him. Steve flicked his eyes aside to his friend; he had to have been listening in while he was planning his kill, so he would have heard it too. But he was relieved to see that it didn't appear to hold any negative connotations to him. In fact, Bucky looked rapt.

_Kiss me once, then kiss me twice_  
_Then kiss me once again._  
_It's been a long, long time._

Steve couldn't help it, he let his hand slide over a bit, let his little finger brush against Bucky's hand. He couldn't take his eyes off him. "You know, you used to love to dance," he said, "back in Brooklyn, before the war. You used to make me come along even though I had two left feet." His hand slid a bit further, over Bucky's. "Always wished you'd teach me. Wouldn't have been proper back then I guess."

He didn't seriously expect any reaction, certainly not being swept out of the chair and pushed back from the table. For a second, he thought he'd said something to anger Bucky, that indimidating armour making his movements look effortlessly threatening. Steve braced for a fight, when all he got was Bucky pulling him in close, slowly sliding a hand onto his hip and another on his shoulder, swaying with him.

Steve could have laughed with relief if he weren't afraid to spook Bucky. He went pliant in his friend's arms, resting his head on his shoulder and letting the lilting music do the work. He hummed along, adding in the odd lyric where he knew the words.

_You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you_  
_Or just how empty they all seemed without you..._

"Is this real?" Bucky whispered in his ear, and Steve felt his heart thud in his chest. The mask sounded like it was gone at last, not that he'd noticed it being removed. His voice sounded rough and hoarse, a shock of unexpected sound that made Steve's breath catch in his throat.

"Sure is, pal," he ventured, quietly, afraid to break the mood. "Don't make me step on your toes to prove it."

"How?"

"The serum. Turns out, you got it too, some form of it. Gave us a connection. I'm really here and so are you." Steve clung on just a little bit tighter. "Don't know how, just know it's real. You ah, you used to say this was heaven and where you were going was... wasn't. I'm sorry I didn't understand it, Buck. God, I'm so sorry I wasn't there to stop it."

He realised belatedly that Bucky had stiffened in his arms, all movement to the music gone. Steve risked drawing back so he could see him and realised he was staring off over his shoulder, into places Steve couldn't ever follow. "I think," he said, softly, hesitantly, "you _were_ there."

Bucky shifted his gaze to Steve, refocusing, that unkempt hair falling all over the place, over his face and eyes, inviting him to brush it aside and tuck it behind his ears, tenderly. Even after so many years, despite the new lines in his face, the tired pinch around the eyes, Bucky still had the ability to take Steve's breath away with just a look.

"I need to know you're okay, you know, out there," Steve said. "I want you to come home. To my place. Would you do that for me?"

The question led to a startled shift in Bucky's whole demeanour. He backed away, glaring. "You don't know me," he growled.

"I do, Buck."

"No you don't! You can't!"

"I know it all. Everything they made you do..."

"Shut up!" The metal arm was audibly powering up, plates shifting, and Steve braced for a first to come slamming into him. Instead, Bucky smashed the window and disappeared out into the snow.

Steve watched him disappear again, sadly, and then slowly turned the radio off.

It was the last time he saw Bucky for quite a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those are the lyrics of the song that was playing when Bucky and Steve had their reunion (and Nicky Fury got shot), I shit you not. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1L9wxYbs0>


	8. Chapter 8

The last thing Steve expected was a phone call from Bruce, asking him if the guy with the metal arm was the friend he'd told him about, though in hindsight he should have seen that coming.

"Is he okay? Are you okay? What happened?" Steve rambled, panicking a little, sitting bolt upright in his bed.

"Oh it's fine. He just... paid me a visit. Asked about the serum." 

"What did you tell him?"

"I probably just confirmed what I'm guessing you told him. I filled him on some of the results of my tests confirming the psychic connection theory between recipients. I told him how I got it... how it went wrong. He just listened for the most part and then ran off all of a sudden."

Steve thanked Bruce and tried to ignore the dark uncoiling feeling of hurt over Bucky running all the way to the storm cloud instead of coming back to the apartment. The logical part of him said it was a good thing, he was reaching out again by speaking to Bruce. But Steve wasn't above feeling a small pang of jealousy.

It didn't help that Bucky went to see Bruce again not long later.

"He asked me what I was doing and I told him I had to medidate, you know, to control the Hulk. It was an interesting conversation."

And again.

"So your friend asked me to teach him how to medidate. Said he wanted to control himself the same way. I think it might have helped."

Steve found himself asking Bruce to venture out of his space and come into his, to the apartment. He was a little relieved when Bruce told him that he didn't like to leave, since the one time he had, it had triggered a really bad Hulk out and 'things' happened. His mental space was a tightly held vessel of control that he didn't want to upset.

So Steve simply had to wait and put his own feelings aside. It sounded like whatever Bucky was doing was healthy; seeking help from someone with issues that were not the same, but might be relatable in some way. When Steve was asleep and hanging around the apartment alone, he once again drew scenes that Bucky might remember and started putting them up on the wall again, concentrating to make sure they would stay there even when he was away, just in case his friend came back.

"Hey Cap, he spoke about you last night," came the next update from Bruce. "I think he's going to go find you again soon, he's just... I don't know, it seemed like he felt kind of ashamed. He said something about being able to live with knowing what he's done, but he's finding it hard to live knowing that _you_ know what he's done. Poor kid."

A long pause was left to hang while Steve tried to find words to explain how he felt. "Bruce, I... There are things... that I don't really know how to find the words for. He's not _just_ my friend, he's... uh..."

"You don't have to explain anything to me, Cap," Bruce butted back in, kindly. If he guessed what Steve was trying to say, he didn't let on. "All I know is, he's hurting without you, but he's gotta work through some things. Just hang tight, he's finding his way back to you at his own pace."

All the jealous feelings evaporated and Steve was a little ashamed at himself for ever having had them in the first place. "I owe you big time," he said, letting out a huff of relief as he did.

"Buy me some pork scratchings and maybe some beer - not Guiness - next time you're in town. We'll call it quits."

"You got it."

It got a little easier to wait after that. Steve had to trust what Bruce had said, that time was simply needed. Looking at it objectively, as Sam encouraged him to do, Steve was part of the problem and he knew it; a living breathing reminder of their past, of why Bucky had let himself become a killer in the first place. Hell, he could have gone home after '43 after what he went through, but he had thrown that chance away because he wouldn't let Steve fight the war alone. _Of course_ Bucky needed some space from him.

Hanging around the apartment, sketching scenes with the replenishing supplies from the drawer in the table, became a sort of vigil. He focused on drawing not just places, but pictures of Bucky as he remembered him; the dashing young man with all that happiness in his eyes, lying around reading his science fiction story comics, having fun in the dance halls with all the obliging broads who followed him around, eating cotton candy way too fast whenever the travelling fair came to town and smiling lazily at Steve while he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes in the mornings. He tried to draw him as the Winter Soldier too, not as a negative comparison, but to show that they were the same person with the same light visible in his eyes. It was important for Bucky to know that he didn't just want the old version of him, he wanted him back as he was now.

Eventually the vigil came to an end. He sensed Bucky was back before he saw him. The repaired window was opened rather than smashed and Bucky leapt inside, bringing a gust of cold wind with him, landing gracefully on the restored carpet like a cat.

The difference in him was obvious to Steve immediately. He didn't look so tightly coiled and ready to bolt at any second the way he did before. Some of the confidence he used to have appeared to have returned, even though his eyes were still more pained than anyone's should be. The uniform had also changed. It was still black, but also less foreboding somehow; a simple leather jacket with dark piping over some lightweight black pants and a shirt, with far fewer items of weaponry attached about his person.

"Hey Buck," Steve said, with a gentle smile. "Missed you." He got back to drawing, making sure he wasn't pressuring him or staring unduly, trying to be as casual as possible.

Bucky came up behind him, looking at the pictures he'd drawn and pinned up. "You need a new hobby," he muttered, gruffly.

Steve was startled and tense until he realised, it was a joke. Bucky had actually made a joke. Sort of.

"Jerk," he chuckled.

"I don't look like that now."

"Not far off." He held up a sketch he'd made of Bucky in his Winter Soldier uniform. "See."

Bucky looked away, apparently not wanting to see it. After a moment Steve realised that he was staring at the door to the bedroom, or what had been the bedroom once (Steve hadn't gone near it for some time). He looked pained.

"What's up?" Steve asked.

"There's something I gotta do. It's... I think it's the only way but... I don't know what'll happen."

Steve stood up and slipped his hand into Bucky's metal one. "Hey, it's alright. Whatever it is, let me do it with you."

He was relieved beyond belief when Bucky squeezed his hand back lightly and nodded.

They went to the bedroom door together and Steve watched Bucky reaching for the handle. His other hand hovered over it for a few seconds, shaking a little, unable to make that final connection.

"I'm here. You can do this," Steve offered, quietly.

That reassurance seemed to help. Bucky's hand finally snapped forward and the door swung open. The cold and frightening room with the big metal chair at the centre of it was revealed to them, just as dark and foreboding as Steve remembered. He heard Bucky's breathing growing heavy beside him.

Bucky pulled free of his grip and slowly walked inside by himself, towards the chair that Steve knew had been HYDRA's choice implement of torture for him. He watched with pride swelling in his chest as Bucky pressed on, despite all the fear and the apprehension he was obviously feeling. He watched as his friend circled around it and leaned in, held his breath when the sheet was pulled away and dropped to the floor, and Bucky lifted up the dead child in the chair in his arms.

As Steve watched, he realised belatedly that the little boy, that small kernal of Bucky that they hadn't been able to ever truly get rid of, was actually coming alive again. Little hands flexed, his eyes fluttering open, though his skin remained like porcelain. They were staring into each other's eyes as Bucky carried him away from the chair, the child now clinging onto his older counterpart but appearing oddly serene and unafraid. "It's alright," Bucky told him, "you're safe now. It's over."

There was a sudden expulsion of light that Steve had to avert his eyes from, the entire room swallowed whole for a moment. When he looked again, the chair was gone and the room had been restored to the old bedroom with the creaky double bed, the mahoghany closet and the sink in the corner. Bucky was on the floor where he'd been standing before, curled into a ball, holding his face in his hands. The child was finally gone, or maybe just put back where he belonged somehow.

Steve rushed over and wrapped himself around Bucky without a second thought, holding on tightly, unable to help himself. He nuzzled into his hair, desperate to pour his feelings out and show Bucky that none of it mattered to him, that he needed him.

"It... it hurts too much" Bucky moaned between painful, chest breaking gasps for air, "I can't live with this."

"Can," Steve promised. "Will." He about melted when Bucky suddenly leaned into him and started to kiss him, passionately, with an incredible desperation. Steve couldn't quite believe that it was possible, that this was _real_ , that Bucky Barnes was alive, that he had wanted this too. It was almost too incredible to believe, and yet...

"You were gone... gone so long..." Bucky gasped between kisses. "Don't go again..."

"Never. Stuck with me now."

Bucky bumped his nose against Steve's, affectionately, a newly dawning smile burning through all the unhappiness that had been written on his face for too long. His head fell back and he laughed in a way Steve hadn't heard for such a long time it almost hurt, and he realised that his voice too sounded less gruff overall. "'Til the end of the fuckin' line, right?"

"Yes and hey, why are you laughing at me?" Steve poked him in the ribs, the release of pressure caused by his laughter proving infectious.

"'Cause you're still a corn ball."

"You said it to me first!" Steve huffed in mock outrage.

"Yeah well, it sounded just swell when _I_ said it."

"Such a godamned jerk." Reuniting those pieces of Bucky together had restored something in him, Steve could tell; he finally sounded like the man he'd known all those years ago. The man he'd loved desperately, hopelessly.

Bucky smiled as he pecked him on the jaw and rubbed away a tear that had escaped onto one of Steve's cheeks without his knowledge using the tip of his nose. " _Your_ godamned jerk."

"Oh yeah?"

Those blue eyes that were so familiar to Steve slowly slid closed and Bucky rested his forehead against Steve's. "So all that time, back during the war, we were really foolin' around? And we didn't know it."

"Pretty funny I guess. If you come home, we could do this stuff for real." Steve tried to sound nonchalant about it and failed badly. There could be no hiding just how much he wanted that.

"I guess I want..." Bucky sighed, "I do want to go to you, to go home..."

"Oh thank God."

"Let me finish. It's not, not that simple. I'm not..." Bucky's smile was failing him and his words weren't coming so easily. "It's harder out there. Times have changed sure but it's still... And then there's my arm and... stuff and... I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't. Come home. Please."

"I want to, it's just... honestly, I'm not sure I can."

"Then I'll come find you."

Bucky was shaking his head, sadly.

"What? What is it? C'mon Buck, lay it on me. What's the problem? You're not... you're not being held captive are you?"

There was a conspiratorial edge to the way Bucky untangled himself from Steve and pulled him up to sit next to him on the bed, like this was a conversation he didn't even know how to start. He looked down at his hands which were twisting in his lap nervously as he continued.

"Asset protocols. I wanted to find out what happened to Director Alexander Pierce." There was a hardness to his tone that made Steve exceedingly happy the man was extremely dead already. "I hacked into the SHIELD surveillance systems while the network was in chaos, saw Director Nicholas Fury still alive. I was confused... Asset protocols..."

"What's the protocols?"

"Reactivation of incomplete mission supercedes later mission based priorties. I... found it hard at first, reconciling all the stuff in my head. I did remember you, something of you, enough to know I had to stop you drowning when you fell. But honestly, after that, I maybe only stopped trying to enact termination because I was required to enact termination for my original mission."

Steve held his breath waiting to hear what came next. "You didn't though."

"No. I was prevented. He used commands. HYDRA commands. Must have already done some digging of his own after everything that happened. He activated himself as new Asset commander and cancelled previous mission commands."

It was actually severly disconcerting, the way Bucky's voice changed, becoming robotic and measured, him speaking in a way that didn't sound like him at all. All the tech speak sounded wrong in his mouth, like it had been forced on him along the way and just didn't really sit right. "Then you should be free, right?"

Now Bucky was staring off aside again, lost someplace else that Steve couldn't fathom. "Directory Fury instigated new commands."

It took a moment for his words to sink in, and when they did, Steve actually felt something pop in his forehead. "That son of a bitch," he growled and sprung to his feet. "That godamned _son of a bitch_! He _knew_ I would be looking for you! I can't believe he...!"

"It's not..." Bucky protested, weakly, "It's not terrible. It was easiler in the end than, you know, making decisions, figuring out what to do. At least now I know my targets are really bad people I guess. I'm contained. I _needed_ to be contained."

Steve stared at him so hard it made Bucky shrink under his gaze. Without warning Steve grabbed him, pulled him close and kissed him hard. It had the desired effect almost immediately, waking Bucky up to what he wanted, to the person he was beyond the apparently endless line of people who wanted to use the Winter Soldier for their own purposes. Steve needed him to remember that he had a choice, a voice beneath that silencing mask that had clung to him, and that he'd already said what that choice actually was.

"You're coming home," Steve said, firmly.

"Steve," Bucky chided, gently, "I don't need you fight my battles."

"Why not, you've fought enough of mine Buck. No, this is going to end. You're a fuckin' person not some _Asset_."

Bucky actually looked stunned by his outburst but his eyes were smiling. "Potty mouth, Jeez. Captain America isn't supposed to know words like that."

"Yeah well, fuck Captain America too," Steve said, not even joking, the words pouring out of him like an eruption from beneath his skin that had been bubbling up for a long time. "I'm so godamned tired of him, of all this," he sighed and rested his forehead on Bucky's shoulder, the weight of yet another betrayal sinking on his shoulders, not that he was hugely shocked to discover Nick Fury was playing his own game again. It wasn't like the old days anymore, when people's motivations and plans were never hidden. Almost everything and everyone was shaded grey, ruined with secrets now and he hated it. "I just... I want to feel like me again."

Metal fingers scraped delicately up his spine and came to rest between his shoulders, while a warmer hand slipped into his own and latticed their fingers together. Knowing that the sensations he was feeling were actually real somehow made everything feel a little bit more intense to Steve. It was nothing short of miraculous really, to be able to feel all this, for Bucky to still be alive after all this time, in a place he could really touch him like they were together.

"Me too," Bucky breathed and kissed his temple lightly, making him shiver. "I don't think I can be me without you... um, does that make sense?"

Funnily enough, Steve understood completely. "More than you know, Buck," he sighed, "more than you know."


	9. Chapter 9

Nick Fury had gone to ground pretty well, which was probably to be expected of a dead man with that many enemies. Fortunately, Steve had his insider. Bucky gave him a road map of his recent targets, starting in France, moving on into Germany and then to Switzerland, ending with a current mission soon to be carried out in Poland. With a trail of newspaper headlines about mysterious deaths available online in the locations named, it didn't take a genius to figure out just why Fury had decided to repurpose the Winter Soldier for his own ends. His presence was obviously making his mission to put down some of the leftover HYDRA sleeper agents who had scattered abroad a lot more easy than it would otherwise have been.

Steve actually wished he'd taken Fury up on his offer of going to Europe to hunt down all the rats who hadn't gone down with the ship. He might have found Bucky much sooner if he had, which was a terrible irony really.

As for his current mission, there was something extremely creepy about the idea of one or more of those rats going to ground not fifty miles from Auschwitz, where hundreds of thousands of people died at the hands of the Nazis and too many survivors were taken by their supposed liberators from the Red Army to what ended up being an equally terrible fate. The oldest infrastructures of those dark days were alive and well it seemed. Once again, it was a bitter reminder to Steve that, while the Allies had won the war, the beast had never really been slain. It had been growing through the cracks like an infection; all that sacrifice, so many lives ruined, and all for nothing in the end.

Fury had always been a man with a singular focus and an ability to completely justify it in his own mind, whatever it was. He was the walking talking living breathing embodiment of the sentiment, 'the ends justify the means'. Steve hadn't been pleased with him over his facilitation of Project Insight, but he'd dropped that grievance since it had almost cost Fury his life and all. This however was a personal insult, delivered like a slap in the face.

Sam hadn't wanted to come with him, of course, and Steve was tempted to let him. This just felt too private somehow. Much as Bucky was recovering slowly in their shared mindspace, pulling all the broken pieces of himself back together, he was far from okay. Steve didn't want to put any extra stress on Bucky if he could avoid it.

The remote compound Fury had taken over was not a SHIELD one. It might have once been a HYDRA base, but time had erased the details. There were guards to be knocked out at the gates, since apparently Fury had found a few trustworthy SHIELD footsoldiers to come along and help him with his elimination mission. He also had to incapacitate one man in the corridors too as he swept his way inside.

Fury seemed completely unsurprised to see Steve when he finally pushed his way into the command centre. He told the guards there to stand down and greeted him like he was a guest instead of an infiltrator. "Changed your mind, Captain?"

"You know why I'm here," Steve snapped, not accepting his hand gestured offer to take a seat beside him. He had worked himself up into an angry frenzy on the way in there and it needed an outlet.

Fury sighed, stirred his coffee, pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Sergeant Barnes."

"Where is he?"

"Look, it wasn't my intention to..."

"I don't want to hear it," Steve cut him off, chopping a hand through the air. "Just another compartmentalisation, another excuse, another justification. I used to believe in you, in SHIELD. Now I guess I understand why you never saw Project Insight for what it really was. You were always just as bad as HYDRA too, deep down."

"Careful Captain," Fury said in his most unamused tone. "That's not an accusation to make lightly. I had nothing to do with the Winter Soldier project, as you well know."

"No, you're just perpetuating it." Steve noticed that some of the guards were inching closer to him, sensing that his anger was escalating. Not that it mattered; he could take them all without a second thought. "How _dare_ you do this to him, trap him again. He not your Asset, he's James Buchanan Barnes. He's a godamned American hero."

Fury was shaking his head. "I know who he is. I'm not his jailor, I offered him the chance to make something good come out of what happened to him."

Steve barked a bitter laugh at his attempt to justify things, yet again. "You think I don't know what you offered him? You used protocols to disarm him and then you forced his obedience. You used _HYDRA_ protocols. And you sit there, pretending to be better than them?"

The Director gave him a long stare through his sunglasses, a note of surprise on his face, and Steve was pleased to have taken him off guard with that little piece of knowledge. It felt good to put him on the backfoot for once.

"If he's a free man then let me see him," Steve demanded.

Fury smiled and shrugged. "Of course." He gave one of the guards a nod. "Show the Captain down to the theatre."

Steve didn't miss the way the guard tightened his grip on his gun with a note of unease as he moved to carry out the order. In some ways he found it gratifying, because he was not messing around and he didn't care who knew it. He kept his glare in full heat as he was led to a rickety old freight elevator and didn't let it falter as they were slowly dropped downwards about three floors.

The guard didn't seem to want to stick around. He pointed him in the right direction in the musty corridor and then retreated back into elevator, letting him go it alone from there on.

As implied, he found himself walking straight on into the upper level of what had once clearly been some sort of medical theatre, of the kind seen in old Victorian lithographs of surgical lessons taught to eager young men in waistcoats and top hats. The space looked like it had been old and decaying once but had been rebuilt in recent times, new tech attachments nestled against the old stone walls. The flourescent lights gave it a more modern feel than was probably warranted and a lot of seating appeared to have been removed, especially below the upper level. Steve stepped forward along the aisle to the edge and looked down over the edge, into the space below, and his heart tugged immediately.

Bucky was there at the centre of it, amongst a pile of free weights, mats and other sparse bits of gym equiptment, performing an amazing feat of balancing on his hands, legs rigidly straight and floating in the air, turning his body into a near-levitating curve, every muscle in his back visibly rippling even though he was otherwise perfectly still and serene. It looked like some sort of yoga position, perhaps part of his training which maintained the acrobatic skills he'd displayed before in DC. As Bucky was only wearing some loose blue sweatpants, the painful looking join between flesh and metal on his left side assaulted Steve's eyes for the first time and it made him bite his lip.

He had a feeling that Bucky was probably aware of his presence already, so he decided not to tiptoe around. Steve slipped right over the side of the upper level and landed below on one of the mats with a dull thud. But in the time it took for him to settle on his feet and look up, intending to speak, Bucky had already gone. That enhanced speed and ability to disappear was what had made him such a longstanding ghost story in the intelligence community, Steve guessed.

Bucky had retreated to the shadows cast in circle around the lower level, standing half behind an old leather punching bag, looking a little wary. It wasn't quite the reception Steve had hoped for. He watched as Bucky slowly pressed a finger to his lips, and then pointed upwards in several different directions. Steve understood immediately; cameras and audio feed.

Without looking at the spying eyes on them, Steve stepped forward out of the light and into the shadows too, tensing a little as Bucky grabbed a fistfull of his shirt to lead him to where he wanted to go. They stepped over a bench and ended up next to the wall, between two more benches which had been upturned and balanced against the side.

"Can't see or hear us here," Bucky whispered, and Steve immediately saw the ingeniousness of what he'd done; the benches were his improvised zone markers. They were inside a safe zone from the cameras which he'd probably tested extensively, maybe just for this.

They stared at each other for what felt like far too long. Steve was itching to reach out and touch him, his palms sweating, but this was different to what they had shared in their dreams. No matter how real that space felt, it wasn't real. Being this close again wasn't the same as getting pumelled by the Winter Soldier either; this was Steve standing beside that boy who had swapped their shoes around and then, miraculously, wanted to spend the rest of his life looking out for him, some scrawny kid from Brooklyn no one else ever looked twice at. This was _his Bucky_ , right in front of him, close enough to touch.

He could tell Bucky was thinking something similar. The moment was tense.

"Miss me?" Steve finally breathed.

Bucky smiled a little and tilted his head. "How can I miss you when I see you in my dreams?" He paused and then relaxed a little. "Alright... yes. Like you wouldn't believe."

That was all it took for the walls to crumble. Bucky moved first, sliding himself against Steve's body, arms wrapping around him, his breathing ragged. Everything seemed to slow down as Steve held onto him, swaying with him, breathing him in. They'd never done this in the flesh before, just held each other, but Steve knew he had ached for it for so long it was inbuilt into his very being. Those cherished winter nights they'd spent closer than normal in that creaky old bed had never been like this; too many half truths between them then. This was everything he'd been afraid to want and more.

"Can't hardly believe you're here," Bucky muttered, "that we're... I wonder what the Howlies would say if they saw us now."

"It's no one's business but ours," he said, too quickly. Steve did still feel that small pang of shame, that sense of fear at being in love with a man instead of a woman. No matter that he had lived in the new century for a few years now, with all its new rules on what was okay and what wasn't, he was still fundamentally the child of very different era where it probably happened plenty but really wasn't spoken of, much less put on display. As easy as it was to be together with Bucky in their private dreams, Steve knew it would be a long time before he got used to the liberalism of the new century on such matters. He suspected Bucky would be much the same; maybe the way he'd found a dead spot in the room before Steve even arrived was part of that sense of needing to hide.

"Do me a favour Steve and quit with all that worrying. It's giving me a headache."

"Sorry." He touched his fingers to Bucky's long hair, messy and jagged, and it was a lot softer than he expected. The texture was a detail he hadn't noticed from his dreams and it felt all the more important because of that. Steve couldn't help the way his hand slid down and pressed against the scarred and jagged flesh joining Bucky's body with the HYDRA created metal arm that had been forced on it, like he was nothing more than a machine on an assembly line. He felt Bucky recoil and try to pull away, but he kept him close and pressed fluttering kisses to his temple. "Sorry sorry. Just... can't believe what they've done to you, Buck. Does it hurt?"

Bucky didn't answer. He was staring away, gone off into his head.

Steve had a weird moment of freefall, like he flashed in and out of himself, one moment standing holding Bucky, the next recalling an agony beyond words, a crushed arm, someone hacking at it with a knife to pull him free of something, blood splattering out into the snow. Steve exhaled deeply, not quite sure what that was but sensing that there might be more dimensions to the way the serum had connected their minds than they had yet explored.

There was no time to wonder about that now though. He shook Bucky a little, bringing him back from his thoughts. "What now, Buck?"

"Director Fury," he replied, and looked pained. "I require a release order of some kind. I know it, um, it don't make sense but..."

"No, no of course it does. They put things in your head to control you."

Bucky pressed his lips together in a thin line and nodded, sharply. He looked angry. Steve recalled what Bruce had told him, about Bucky finding it hardest of all to deal with Steve coming to know all the awful details of what had been done to him. That meant he had to be strong for both of them and make it alright by not letting on just how deeply it was upsetting him.

"Fury can do his own dirty work from now on," he said, calmly. "We're getting that code right now and then we're leaving." Noticing that Bucky was slipping into his mind again, Steve slipped his hand into his warm human hand and gave it a squeeze, trying to ground him. "Hey."

It worked, centring Bucky and giving him the chance to focus. He bestowed a small smile on Steve and it felt like a gift.

They went up the steps to the higher level together, Steve itching to hold hands but no more ready than he guessed Bucky would be for doing something like that. Cameras were everywhere and two extra guards had gathered at the elevator. They stood aside and let them in, the man who had escorted Steve down before accompanying them back up to the command centre.

Fury was standing before a projection of a map of a building, some sort of mansion from the look of it, assessing the details of an entry plan with danger point markers overlaid onto it.

"Good afternoon Barnes," he said, without turning round. "I trust the Captain is appraised of the situation with Dr Kasper Dancsyk."

"Target status level six," Bucky said in that dispassionate, ill-fitting voice that Steve already hated. "Awaiting permission to proceed." His friend was gone again, he could tell, years of brainwashing and programming to act a certain way taking over.

The screen flickered and an ID screen appeared with a photo and scrolling points of information about the apparent next target on Fury's list. "He was, until recently, in charge of SHIELD's largest medical testing division out in Cleveland, going under the name of Dr James Simon. You know what he did when HYDRA activated its sleeper agents, Captain? He poisoned every single person in the medical unit, all twenty seven, and used them as a distraction in order to vanish. He's hiding out in a fortified mansion right now about two miles away from here. There are signs he's preparing to relocate. We need to take him out now before he goes off the grid."

It was obvious that he was telling Steve about this target in some attempt to impress the perceived importance of what they were doing on him. "And you've got plenty of people here to do that," Steve said, tone bland.

"If we spook him by going in in force we'll lose him. Our only chance is for Barnes to do what he does best. Infiltrate and eliminate." Fury turned to Bucky. "Asset, you are cleared to proceed with your mission."

Steve hated the blankness on Bucky's face, everything they had talked about gone in the face of the order he was clearly compelled to obey. He turned to leave, presumably to put on his combat gear.

"No wait, stop," Steve interjected and tried to hold him back from leaving with a hand on his metal arm. "No, he's not doing this." But Bucky pulled free easily and continued to walk away, like he hadn't even noticed Steve's attempt to stop him.

"Apparently, he is," Fury said with a tone suspiciously close to gloating.

"You're a monster," Steve growled, hating the feeling of defeat that sank in his gut.

"Dr Dancsyk is a monster." The Director shook his head, maybe rolling his remaining eye behind the sunglasses. "You of all people should know how important this is. HYDRA is the biggest threat there is and the virus is still spreading. This man has to be taken out." Perhaps Fury wasn't completely unable to see the pain in Steve's features, as he sighed as he sat down at the command table again, shaking his head. "Look, I'm not blind to what you're saying. I wouldn't be doing this if I had a choice. I'm just looking at the bigger picture."

"There's always a choice. Always. How many targets has he taken out for you now? Nine, ten? When will it end?"

"He's responsible for dozens of assassinations against our side. Hell, he took out a godamned American President. He's been the trigger for more war, more death than probably anyone in the world in the last century. You don't think he's got a lot to attone for...?"

"Don't even start that argument. That wasn't his choice and you know it."

"What do you want me to say, Cap?"

Steve fixed a gaze made of sharp steel onto him. "Make this the last one," he said, negotiating, much as he hated the idea of it. "Let him go in exchange for this. Use a release code, if that's what it takes." He stood right next to him, leading against the table. "Please. You have no idea what this is doing to him."

Fury pursed his lips, apparently mulling it over. "It's a little more complex than that."

"If you're worried he'll be a danger..."

"I don't mean that. I did consider cutting him loose at the start after I used commands to stop him from shooting me down again, but it was pretty clear he's trained to respond to these codes and objectives without much in the way of conscious thought. The only way to totally free Barnes that I've found is to provide a post mission termination of service command."

"Meaning?"

"Honestly, I don't know. Termination of service might mean he finishes the mission and then walks off into the sunset and buys a boat. It might also mean he turns a gun on himself and blows his brains out."

Steve shuddered and some remnants of his lunch rose up in his throat at the thought.

Fury shrugged, finally looking at least slightly repentent about the whole thing. "I know what you think, but I did this to protect him too. They really screwed him up. He required containment, guidance."

"I needed to be contained, " a quiet voice said, and Steve actually jumped in surprise. Bucky had appeared behind them, moving as silently as a ghost again, now dressed in the same leather jacket with the piping that Steve recognised from their more recent shared dreams.

"This is the best place for him."

Steve could see something in Bucky's eyes straining, though his mouth remained clamped shut.

"Let him be the judge of that. Let him speak freely."

There was a pause, and Steve thought Fury was going to say no, but finally he turned his seat around and huffed his breath like he was doing something against his better judgement. "Asset, report your opinion. What do you want?"

It was bizarre seeing Bucky's body jolt as if he'd been suddenly freed from an invisible net that had been keeping him pinned there. "I... I want... termination of service."

"Bucky..."

"That's what I want," he said, more fimly. "This mission in exchange for... for freedom. I want... to go home now."

Fury sighed and looked at Steve. "Well?"

It wasn't what Steve had meant or wanted when he asked for Bucky to be given a chance at freedom. The idea of taking a risk like that filled him with a cold terror beyond words. But there was a note of defiance in Bucky's face which he hadn't seen before; a determination that filled him with hope for an eventual recovery. It was something he couldn't bear to take away from him, not now. Slowly, he nodded his agreement.

"Alright then. Asset, target code level six is a go. Upon ellimination, Asset is granted full termination of service. All command protocols will be terminated. There will be no further missions or service requirements." Fury shrugged. "I guess that should do it. Sergeant Barnes, your service here has been commendable. You've made a real difference in this fight. I wouldn't exactly say it's been a pleasure but, thank you."

Bucky gave him a curt nod and turned to leave, the mission objective apparently taking him over and driving him to get going immediately.

Steve turned to Fury to thank him, but before he could speak, he felt a hand on his shoudler. He half turned and was surprised to see that it was Bucky. He looked at Steve with such an expression of painful adoration, Steve couldn't breathe, and when Bucky leaned in and kissed him, all heat and open mouthed eagerness, it didn't even occur to him not to kiss back.

It only lasted a few seconds, the soldier reasserting and carrying Bucky away again, marching out for his mission. Only then did Steve feel his heart drop into his knees on realising that everyone in the room had seen that. _Everyone._

His face actually felt like it had set on fire.

"Well," Fury said, "my momma sure never told me that version of the Captain America story."

Steve cleared his throat and tried to compose himself. "It's not what you think," he said.

"Sure it is. Actually, I feel a whole lot better about setting him loose, now I know he's got a - what did you fellas call it back then - a sweetheart?" Fury and chuckled, actually smiling at him genuinely now. "Hope things work out for you, Cap."

Oddly the atmosphere in the room felt lighter. His animosity toward Fury disippated somewhat and Steve actually found himself smiling a little himself. But he didn't want to linger on it too long. Time was ticking and he wasn't about to let Bucky go off alone. He fully intended to follow from a subtle distance and keep watch on him, just in case things went wrong.

So Steve accessed the projector screen and started scrolling through the pages, letting his photographic memory do the work, getting himself up to speed before heading off on a final mission of his own.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has followed this story, my very first in this fandom! Really weird and a bit nerve wracking when you first try to dip your toe in a new playpen. Hopefully worked out okay though! Again, thanks for reading and special thanks to those who have commented with their thoughts and helped to shape the last few chapters.

Steve had managed to keep Bucky in his sights most of the way, taking a different route the get past the mansion gates but still able to predict his movements based on the alarms that might be triggered and the target's usual movements, according to their data.

He wasn't sure if Bucky knew he was there too, playing shadow, but it hardly mattered. Kasper Dancsyk appeared to be alone in the mansion, an old and decaying building from a bygone era without much in the way of interior lighting to speak of. He was occupying his time in what might have been a ballroom or main dining room at one time on the first floor east wing, seated on a chaiselong at one end beside a large old fireplace, reading a book, watched over by dozens of old portraits of long dead men and women. Steve had swung upwards and vaulted across the balconies to get a good vantage point where he could see the man through the large windows, but where he would be concealed by the night darkness.

Though he couldn't quite make him out at first, a flicker of movement in the shadows told him that Bucky was there and getting into position to deliver his killing shot. Fury had given Steve an audio receiver earpiece which was calibrated to one implanted in Bucky's jacket so he'd at least be able to hear anything said, just in case. He could hear the faint sound of classical music coming from inside, too quiet to make it through the windows but just about audible through his earpiece. There was a clock somewhere near Bucky too, ticking away in the background, a burst of chimes signifying the late hour.

The moon and stars were out, bright and full without any of the light polution he was used to from the city to dull them. Steve thought that, at a less fraught time, he might have been quite enchanted. It led him to thinking about what might come after all this was done; the sort of life he wanted to live with Bucky, perhaps travelling, resting, free to do anything they wanted finally without the shadow of poverty and war forever tainting their lives. For the first time since waking up in the new century, Steve was starting to feel the unmistakable flutter of hope, as though he was thawing from the ice at last, really coming alive.

"I know you mean to kill me," a heavilly accented voice crackled through his earpeice and startled him out of his thoughts, setting him on edge again, "you can come out from the shadows. There is no need for shyness. It will do you no good." 

Steve watched closely at the position he thought Bucky had taken up, willing him to just get it overwith quickly. Something about the way the man was sitting in such a wide open space and calmly facing the prospect of an assassin's bullet made him very nervous. It didn't add up.

Apparently Bucky had the same impression, as he did then uncoil himself from the shadows. He stepped forward enough to be visible, his gun firmly aimed on target, ready to put him down at any moment.

"There you are," the Doctor said, scratching his chin. "I saw the reports of my compadriots elsewhere meeting certain messy ends. I have known that there was only so far that I could run," he chuckled and stood up, holding his hands out. "For all its pretension, SHIELD has its assassins too it seems." Then he tilted his head, squinting. "Or, perhaps I am seeing a ghost of old Russia. Ah yes... a face I have known before. I suspected it was your handiwork. Good evening Winter Soldier. It has been some time since last we met."

Bucky was moving closer, now fully unsheathed in the dim hall light. He didn't seem inclined to wear a mask anymore, as he had the first time Steve had seen him in this form, so his face was fully visible. But if Bucky felt any curiosity over the old man's words, it did not register on his features. They remained as cold and empty as ever.

"But of course, I suppose you do not remember me. I was a young man when first they asked for my assistance with the drugs that ensured your obedience. You did burn through them so quickly." Dancsyk smiled, toothily, a certain jerkiness to his shuffled movements towards Bucky's position. "If I had known it would be you, I would not have gone to such great lengths to go out with a bang, so to speak. You, you are so easily controlled, persuaded. As a point of curiosity, am I to assume you have been appropriated by SHIELD, or what is left of it? Of course you have."

The way he spoke, the prowling way he moved, it set Steve's teeth on edge. This old man was one of those white coated Doctors who had treated Bucky like on object, making him into an unwilling weapon. Steve tensed with anger, half ready to jump through the window and finish the job already. He didn't know why Bucky wasn't taking the shot and feared that perhaps he was remembering something.

"Then I am doing you a kindness." Dancsyk did a slight twirl and let his jacket drop to the ground, revealling huge packs of C4 explosives strapped around his torso. Steve wondered if the outline of that had been what Bucky had been staring at all along. "Every secret I gained, every formula taken from SHIELD, it has all been sent to the others. Cut off one head, two more shall grow." The man laughed and it reminded Steve momentarily of that terrible laughter that used to ring through his head in his earliest vivid dreams, when the Red Skull had been there. "The moment my heart ceases to beat, these explosives will detonate. My death will serve no purpose. Would you consider walking away?"

There was no flicker of change in Bucky's face or posture. Nothing at all.

"I thought not. Ah well. Then we shall go together." Dancsyk breathed in deeply and opened out his arms, as if welcoming the inevitable. "Go ahead, shoot me. End my life. Hail Hydra!"

But Bucky didn't shoot. He was looking the man up and down, perhaps searching for a way to incapacitate him in a way which would allow the explosives to be removed without detonation.

Dancsyk rolled his eyes. "Losing your touch, _Švejk_." He strode up to Bucky and wrapped a hand around the barrel of the gun, directing its tip directly over his heart. "Come now. I remember you used to cry and beg for your freedom when we left you awake too long. You asked me for death once. At last, I shall grant your wish. Are you not pleased?"

The man had the audacity to reach out and brush some stray hairs from Bucky's cheek, like he had the right to touch him. It made Steve's skin crawl and instinct took him over. He threw himself through the glass of the window, making as loud a noise as he could.

The moment of surprise at the sound gave Bucky the opportunity he needed to clamp his metal hand around the man's neck, lifting him into the air as he slowly cut off his air supply.

Steve watched with a note of relief but then tracked the movement of the Doctor's hands and saw that he was reaching for what looked like a small pull chord dangling from his side. Steve broke into a run but thankfully, Bucky had seen it too. He shot a bloody hole through Dancsyk's hand, then took a shot at each of his shoulders in quick succession, with a final shot delivered to his stomach at a point that Steve knew would be fatal but not if one wanted an instantaneous death.

As Bucky cast the Doctor aside, Steve grabbed him and they broke into a run together, making a beeline for the broken window onto the balcony.

Dancsyk was apparently determined not to go out alone. Before they knew it, flames were exploding behind them and they were being thrown out on the wave of the blast, ears ringing. The noise was incredible, the entire east wing of the mansion blowing out and then collapsing inwards on itself with a massive thunderous boom.

They landed in the garden in a pile of glass and burned out wood, not gracefully at all, but side by side at least. Steve had the presence of mind to sit up and check that they weren't in any immenent danger of being crushed by falling bits of building, which luckily they weren't. Everything was collapsing inwards. He turned to Bucky, smiling with relief.

Bucky looked aside to him and returned it. "Mission objective achieved," he said.

Abruptly his smile fell away. A shock of blue tendrils suddenly erupted across his body from his metal arm, and his whole body jerked, eyes rolling up into his head. Steve grabbed onto him, trying to take it as much of it as he could, feeling his whole body jolt and seize up with the force of the electricity being emanated.

It ended abruptly and Steve realised that Bucky was completely still.

"Bucky?" Steve shook him, "Hey, hey buddy, come on." He realised with a start that Bucky wasn't actually breathing. "Shit, come on. Come on Bucky. Please, don't... not now." He checked for a pulse and, finding nothing, forced air into his lungs. He unzipped his jacket and tried some frantic chest compresions, hot tears springing into his eyes and making them sting. "Please, Bucky, don't do this. Not now. _Please_." 

Though he had no idea how or even why, he felt himself slip away, flickering through the panic, suddenly hanging off the edge of a train speeding along a remote track in the Alps, Bucky clinging onto that broken bar on the side, reaching for him. "Bucky! No!" he screamed desperately and threw himself forward, grabbing onto his hand at the very moment the bar came loose, holding him tightly, preventing his fall as if he was rewriting history somehow with the strength of his need for Bucky to live.

He came back to himself in the moment Bucky opened his eyes and gasped for air, his whole body shaking with the effort. Steve clung onto him, something inside him finally snapping, leaving him wracked with violent sobs of relief.

Bucky's eyes were wide and glassy, his skin tinged with grey. His breathing was erratic, right hand clenching and unclenching against Steve as if he was struggling to control it, the left a dead weight at his side. His whole body was tensing and untensing as though he was fighting his own body for control.

Slowly, he began to calm down. "Shit that hurt," he muttered at last and wiped away Steve's tears lightly with his thumb. "Don't be like that Steve. It was worth it."

"You stopped breathing, you jerk." Steve tried to speak through his hysterical hiccups with limited success.

"Yeah but you pulled me back. I felt it, like I was about to fall away, but you were holding onto me." Bucky tilted his chin up, smiling meaningfully. "Thanks. Thought that was it for me for a second there."

"Not a chance." Steve tried to pull him closer, needing the comfort, but stopped still on hearing Bucky whimper. "What's wrong?"

"My arm's fucked." Bucky carefully peeled his leather jacket away on the right side and Steve saw that his shoulder had a series of shooting burn marks emanating out of it, presumably from the electric shock that had nearly killed him.

"It's alright, I know who can probably fix the arm up, better than new. For now we can head back to Fury's base and..."

"No," Bucky snapped, vehemently, apparently determined never to go back there. "I'll be fine, just need to rest somewhere. I don't heal the same way you do but it's still pretty fast. Just, help me up." 

Steve pulled himself to his feet and then very carefully helped Bucky to do the same, supporting him as best he could by taking the weight of his dead metal arm so it wouldn't tug too hard on the skin around it.

"I want to go somewhere we can sleep for a while," Bucky said and gave him a look that near enough turned Steve's knees to jello. "I feel like celebrating."

A cool breeze settled over them and Steve took a moment to look up at the night sky, with all those stars twinkling and the big moon glowing. He saw so many possibilities, so much ahead for them to share. That burning building was behind them, like all of the pain and separation they'd endured across the decades, and now there was nothing and no one to dictate to them what to do next.

_This is freedom_ , he thought, grinning, and then, as he looked at Bucky's beautiful face, all covered in grime and sweat and that old radiance that he knew so well, felt overwhelmed. _This is love._

 

== EPILOGUE ==

 

Even though Tony Stark had got Bucky's arm working again and pulled out anything that might be dangerous to him, Bucky still seemed to prefer getting physical with Steve in their dream world now that he had fixed himself up with a human arm in it. It meant waking up in sticky sheets, more often than not stuck together even, but there was something magical about being able to practically merge into one mind while Bucky rode him, head back and mouth gaping with pleasure, or clinging onto Steve with his legs around him, fingers clawing at his back, or moving together against the wall or on the edge of the table. Not that they didn't enjoy making love in the real world sometimes too, usually in the shower, or on lazy mornings when they had nowhere to be and no one to hear them making love somewhere near the top of Stark Tower, where all they could see was clouds.

Bucky wasn't anywhere near as reticent about their being together as Steve had expected. Apparently he'd long since lost his ability to give a damn what anybody thought of him along the way and he had no issue with holding hands, touching Steve, even kissing him in full view of whoever happened to be nearby. As awkward as Steve felt at about it first, he was quickly getting up to speed on that score too. After Sam surprised him by telling him he'd figured it out way back before the fight on the helicarriers even and it hadn't even slightly changed how he thought about Captain America, or Steve Rogers, it just didn't seem important to hide anymore.

One definite benefit of their shared dreamspace was the lack of nightmares it bestowed. Bucky still sank into his bad memories sometimes during the day though, losing himself inside a faraway look, and in those times Steve was able to hold onto him and leap in there too to pull him back. It didn't just go one way either; when Peggy Carter died and Steve was a wreck, he felt that sense of support and shared thinking from the other end too.

Bruce took the opportunity of their stay in the tower to start those tests he'd been itching to begin. He came to the conclusion that the psychic touch thing, which triggered in times of extreme stress or emotion for Bucky and Steve, didn't seem to work for him. That is, until one morning when a computer error left him feeling like a Hulk out was coming and the two of them somehow stopped it, one clinging to each arm and acting like a parachute to a falling man. It had given Bruce more confidence to start looking into expanding his mental space in the shared dream area and not restrict himself to staying inside that big green cloud, defending himself against the lightning storm of his own anger. He had some support in his fight for control now and there wasn't a day when they didn't sense his gratitude.

As for the dreamspace itself, well that was different now for all of them. The cold and ice were long since chased away, leaving it a place of eternal blue skies and summer breezes. The apartment was still the central core for Bucky and Steve, and probably always would be, but outside of it their world had been completely transformed.

Steve hadn't appreciated just how much life experience Bucky had gained during his seventy years of being taken off the ice and sent out, one mission at a time. Even as a brainwashed assassin, he had been noticing things, forming memories of places that would later return to him. He'd seen the world in a way that Steve hadn't while he'd been sleeping, and he was bringing all the best parts in with him. It was a mish mash of buildings and places, monuments and landmarks, canals and parks that something inside him had been drawn to, despite all the blood and darkness they'd compelled him to embrace, all of it meshed together with improbable closeness. Steve thought it was wonderful; a playground of sights to wander around together and relax in, just for them.

Worldbuilding came naturally to Bucky, while it took a lot more concentration and effort for Steve. He wondered why that was for a while, recalling that even at the start, when Johann Schmidt had been there, it was that man's terrible fiery apocalypse that he'd been trapped in, not his own space at all. The apartment refuge had only appeared when Bucky had become a presence there. He came to the conclusion in the end that he had simply never had a particular view of the world to create, no great desire to see it any different than it was, in the same way that Bruce hadn't made anything beyond that stormy representation of his emotions. It was just a difference of personalities he supposed.

All Steve had wanted was Bucky by his side. So when Bucky had made their apartment as a refuge for himself while Zola was experimenting on him, Steve had merely latched on, supplanted parts of it, kept it alive in those dark days when Bucky was losing himself. But he hadn't been able to quell the winter storm or prevent the way Brooklyn had slowly disappeared into it. Not alone anyway.

Now that he knew what he could do, Bucky wasn't holding back and Steve couldn't have been happier. Every visit brought new joys, new experiences, new reasons to laugh together.

They decided to go travelling as soon as Bruce had finished his tests, to see those landmarks and buildings for real. Some were already lost to time but Steve wanted nothing more than to make a pilgrimage to the places that still remained in the real world, both to let Bucky see them properly this time round, untainted by the missions he had completed in them, and to give himself the chance to go out and see the world as well.

Once again, they could just be two kids from Brooklyn, out on their adventures. Only this time, there was no one to tell them what to do, who to love, where to go. There was no war to part them, no command codes left to destroy them. They would move with the seasons, never again knowing the cold touch of winter, travelling alongside the heat of the sun over the earth, together at long last and finally completely free.

Steve couldn't wait to go out and live.


End file.
